7 Year Rash

Today is the 7th Anniversary of this blog. For a long time this year I considered making this one my last because, quite simply, The Stupid Have Inherited the Earth. Intelligence and Common Sense (let alone <gasp> Logic) are Politically Incorrect. Hell, some Leftists have decreed that just saying “politically incorrect” is Politically Incorrect. 😦

So instead I thought I’d revisit one of my favorites from the last 7 years.

This also goes out the #NeverTrump -ers who are so mindlessly obsessed with hating Donald Trump that they are willing Hillary into the White House.

Hate never felt so Right. 🙂

And a special shout out to the Sabotage Republicans (The Establishment ones and their followers) WHO ALSO want Hillary.

The Generations (and possibly permanent) of damage you want to inflict on what’s LEFT of this country is so short-sighted you deserve her.

It will be YOUR fault.

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings! -George Orwell

So with that in mind, cast your mindless adherence to January 21, 2012  and this Blog and see yourselves currently in it also.

THE ZOMBIE HOARD

They are just a zombie hoard.

Remorseless. Merciless. Incapable of shame, morals or ethics.

They want want what they want when they want it and because they want it and will do anything to get it. Relentlessly.

And what they want is YOU. You to be either converted or cow-towed to their every whim. To do whatever they want when they want it.

Evidence John King, the CNN Liberal Moderator of the South Carolina Debate. He opens the debate with a salicious question to Gingrich about his “open marriage” and Gingrich blows him to bits for it and the crowd goes wild.

He did this to prove his “courage” to stand up to the evil “right wingers” and puff out his chest that he was “journalist” and was going to bravely confront the issue. Meanwhile, anything remotely damaging to President Obama is ignored with great speed and spin.🙂

2016: Just Like they do with Hillary. The Debate will be set up to show that Trump is grumpy, unstable and mean. The fact that Hillary is a congenital, sociopathica Liar has no bearing on the debates whatsover.

Their will be more Candy Crowley moments than ever.

And the Zombie hoard will eat it up like candy. “Brains…”

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”.- George Orwell.

And their has never been more deceit now than ever in American History and more mindless Zombie Hoards out to make sure “What difference does it make, anyways?”

Rush Limbaugh (who I rarely get a chance to listen to because of my work schedule): Now, let me tell you one thing here, folks: You cannot shame the mainstream media. If any of you are thinking that the media learned a lesson — if any of you believe that the media finally had it handed to ’em, if you believe that the media had their eyes opened and they are fully awake now and they understand what they’re dealing with — forget it. John King is proud of what happened last night. John King is a hero in the Main Street media because he didn’t back down, because he continued to illustrate how it is that the media does really control the agenda. That was a demonstration of the power they hold over every public figure’s head, that they choose to hold like a guillotine. John King… There may even be some jealousy and envy within the journalist ranks (well, not journalists; within the Democrat Party ranks) because John King is a guy that got in Newt’s face, stared him down — and the fact that Newt told him off? It’s a badge of honor. If you are thinking that John King was embarrassed and ran away with his tail tucked between his legs and learned his lesson and it’ll never happen again? Ah, ah, ah, ah. You cannot shame the mainstream media. They are proud of this. They delight in their power to destroy candidates that they don’t like.

And they don’t like anyone who doesn’t cow-tow to them.

2016: They made THEIR Choice. Now it’s you’re Zombie duty to vote for it or else.

“At the end of the day the message to every conservative who hasn’t run for office is: “You want a piece of this? You want some of this? You want Brian Ross hounding you and your ex-wife and then you want me asking you about it on national TV the next night? Come on in. We’re ready.” That’s the message from John King and CNN last night, and do not doubt me on this.”

2016: look at the evidence, every time new “evidence” comes out about Hillary they bury it. Every time Trump even raises his voice or say one less than perfect political phrase they are on it like flies on shit and they stick to it like super glue and blow it up.

So the alternative is to cow-tow. To live in fear of the Liberal wrath.

2016: To acquiesce. Given in, the Ministry of Truth has the system rigged.

Hell, the Democrats got caught rigging the Primary, blatantly.

No one really cared.

The Zombie Hoard just went, “oh” and moved on. The Media covered it up.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was sacrificed.

End of Story.

#2: Hillary is caught re-handed on the Email Scandal. The FBI even says so. But since Comey has connections to Clinton and doesn’t want to have a mysterious “accident” she is not prosecuted.

Future Hillary Supreme Court Nominee Loretta Lynch, Attorney General and Clinton Cronie refuses to prosecute her.

Other people not connected to Clinton aren’t so lucky.

And the reaction from the Zombie Hoard, “Yawn”.

Hillary is still leading in the Polls!

“Brains…”

The Food Police. The TSA. The EPA. The Justice Department. Homeland Security. The FCC.

Because if they can’t make you a zombie, they can at least make you a peasant in fear of your Masters who will not challenge them or not have the power to challenge them.

“[…]you don’t have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

They’ll just turn your children into zombies instead. 12 years of Grade School and 4 years of College is a lot of Zombie Voodoo time after all. And “getting them while they are young” is entirely within the Zombie Liberal playbook. Make them a zombie before they even know what one is and then make them as immune as possible to any anti-virus and get them addicted to their own Kool-Aid. Feed it to them constantly through the Media and the Internet.

2016: They’ll DEMAND Segregation, “Safe Spaces”, “Diversity” and “Inclusion” mindlessly and will trample Free Speech because they don’t want to be “offended”.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

WAR (Class, Gender, Race, Religion) IS PEACE

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Hell, even white people getting a tan will set the little zombie off…

What it does is illustrate that they can be dealt with. But you can’t beat ’em. They’re not gonna be shamed. They’re not going to be shamed into stopping the coverage of conservatives as they do it. It’s going to continue. No matter what kind of shame you think they suffer in a contest like that — no matter how much money they lose, no matter how many of them get fired, no matter how many magazines or TV stations or newspapers get shut down — they are not gonna change. They are hard-core, leftists”

And as I have said over and over again, they are have no morals or ethics because they are governed not by logic and reason but by emotions, mostly the most basic of primitive emotions, Fear, Lust (for power), anger, jealousy, ENVY, etc. –Raw emotions.

2016: THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS!

Which is why when you engage them they sound and act like an immature 5 year old. And as we all know from childhood development the child has to develop a sense of shame by have having boundaries and limitations and consequences. And if they don’t, they will grow up with little to no sense of shame.

2016: “Microaggressions” anyone?

They are usually called sociopaths. I can call them Liberal Zombies.

2016: And the #Never Trumpers and Establishment RINOs.

Liberals have no shame. They want what they want when they want it because they want it.

2016: And the #Never Trumpers and Establishment RINOs.

“…one of the upsides that isn’t gonna happen is the media saying, “Gosh, we’ve been so mean to these people and so unfair. You know, maybe we ought to start being fair.” That’s not going to happen.

Liberals talk about being “fair” which means you’re being unfair to them and should do what they want.

Liberals talk about “compassion” but it’s to make you feel guilty, not them, and to do what they want.

Liberals will talk about “bi-partisanship” but that just means you have to compromise your principles so they can do what they want.

“Diversity” means you’re evil and need to do what they say to repent for your sins.

2016: “Inclusion” Means you include everything THEY say and do it without hesitation.

They are a remorseless hoard. They want what they want when they want it and on their terms only.

Give them everything they want or they’ll cry, scream, bitch, moan, pout and lash out at you.

2016: “White Privilege” anyone?

That is their primitive zombie hoard mentality. And they want YOU.

“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re used.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.”
― Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide

“Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent
thinking clearly is never time wasted.”
― Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide

“I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“They feel no fear, why should you?”– Max Brooks

“The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.”
― Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide

Get rid of one zombie, and 10 more will take it’s place. So you have to be ready to do battle constantly.

Look at 2010. The Democrats suffered the worst defeat in 80 years. Does it look like they learned ANYTHING?

No.

As a matter of fact the zombie hoard is even tighter, even more determined than ever. They want it EVEN MORE.

So if we defeat then in 2012 will they go away?

HELL NO!

2016: They weren’t defeated. Even more hoards joined them. So if they are beat in 2016 will they finally be defeated and go away.

HELL NO!

They will just keep coming back like a remorseless zombie hoard until you are overwhelmed.

Which is why you will have to fight them all of your days, your kids days and their kids days until the infection is wiped out.

But like any good zombie plaque it only takes 1 to re-ignite it and spread it all over again.

And these zombies have Media and Internet outlets! (and Europe!)

“Looking back, I still can’t believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of ‘experts’ all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more ‘shocking’ and ‘in-depth’ than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

The Democrat Party in a nutshell.

FEAR IS HOPE!

My own personal Fourth Orwellian Precept (which includes WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH).

“If you believe you can accomplish everything by “cramming” at the eleventh hour, by all means, don’t lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining”
― Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide

“When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“. . . show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they’re going to be okay.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“This is the only time for high ideals because those ideals are all that we have. We aren’t just fighting for our physical survival, but for the survival of our civilization. We don’t have the luxury of old-world pillars. We don’t have a common heritage, we don’t have a millennia of history. All we have are the dreams and promises that bind us together. All we have…is what we want to be.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

“…We were a shaken, broken species, driven to the edge of extinction and grateful only for tomorrow with perhaps a little less suffering than today. Was this the legacy we would leave our children, a level of anxiety and self-doubt not seen since our simian ancestors cowered in the tallest trees? What kind of world would they rebuild? Would they rebuild at all? Could they continue to progress, knowing that they would be powerless to reclaim their future? And what if that future saw another rise of the living dead? Would our descendants rise to meet them in battle, or simply crumple in meek surrender and accept what they believe to be their inevitable extinction? For this alone, we had to reclaim our planet. We had to prove to ourselves that we could do it, and leave that proof as this war’s greatest monument. The long, hard road back to humanity, or the regressive ennui of Earth’s once-proud primates. That was the choice, and it had to be made now.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

The Future is yours. So is living through “The Walking Dead” and “1984” for real.

Rise Up

Dennis Miller: Hey, kids. Hillary has 1132 pledged delegates without the super delegates factored in. Sanders has 818 of the same. Hillary has 467 super delegates (given out by the powers that be in the Democratic Party) for a total of 1599 delegates. Sanders has been awarded only 26 super delegates for a total of 844 delegates. Flip the super delegate distribution and she would have 1158, he would have 1285. He would be winning. It’s a rigged game over there, young people. They’re going to jam her down your throat. Don’t take it. Rise up.

Loved it. 🙂

It’s also true of The Most Corrupt Woman on The Planet.

And the Democrats having “Super Delegates” that get bought off to settle who gets the Nomination means the process is, like most Democrats, ultimately totally corrupted.

And here’s her voter base…

“How Else He Gonna Get His Money?”

FLORIDA – The family of a 17-year-old are furious the teen was shot and killed by a homeowner police say was protecting her property.

The sister of the teen who died identified him as Trevon Johnson and released the following statement to CBS Miami:

“I don’t care if she have her gun license or any of that. That is way beyond the law… way beyond, He was not supposed to die like this. He had a future ahead of him. Trevon had goals… he was a funny guy, very big on education, loved learning.

 

He obviously needed a better education in “How to” rob someone’s home. 🙂

You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood. You have to understand… how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.”

I wonder if he was a relative of Obama’s “son” Trayvon… 🙂

He had every right to rob you and you weren’t supposed to do anything about it, you rac*st pig dogs!

He needed it. You had it. So it was obvious that that it was his.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

The Crybaby Entitled Generation in a nutshell.

They deserve Hillary.

It’s just the rest of us don’t.

 

 

Sowell of Entitlement

During this election year, we are destined to hear many words that are toxic in the way they misrepresent reality and substitute fantasies that can win votes.

One of these words is “entitlement.” To hear some politicians tell it, we are all entitled to all sorts of things, ranging from “affordable housing” to “a living wage.”

But the reality is that the human race is not entitled to anything, not even the food we need to stay alive. If we don’t produce food, we are just going to starve. If we don’t build housing, then we are not going to have housing, “affordable” or otherwise.

Particular individuals or groups can be given many things, to which politicians say they are “entitled,” only if other people are forced by the government to provide those things to people who don’t need to lift a finger to earn them. All the fancy talk about “entitlement” means simply forcing some people to work to produce things for other people, who have no obligation to work.

It gets worse. If we are all “entitled” to things, irrespective of whether we produce anything ourselves, then the question becomes: Why are some people getting so much more than others?

People who are producing nothing can feel a sense of grievance against those who are producing much, and being rewarded for it, if our basis for receiving economic benefits is supposed to be what we are all “entitled” to, rather than what we have worked to earn.

One of the most misleading uses of the notion of entitlement is to say that people who paid into Social Security for years are now entitled to the pensions they receive.

 

Really? It so happens that I have put money into the same bank account for more than 20 years. But if I were to write a check for a million dollars today, it would bounce! The question is not how long you have been putting money in, but how much money you put in.

If what you have been putting into Social Security over the years is enough to pay you a $1,500 a month pension, but you were promised a $3,000 a month pension, how much are you entitled to? On what basis?

Social Security was created back in the 1930s, during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the shrewdest politicians who ever sat in the White House.

President Roosevelt understood that, if you could convince people that they were entitled to a pension under Social Security, it could become politically impossible to ever put an end to that system.

The pensions promised exceeded what could actually be paid from the money that was put in by the recipients. But the first generation to enter Social Security would have their pensions paid by money received from the second generation, as well as its own money. The second generation would be paid with money that included what was paid in by the third generation, and so on.

This is the principle behind a “pyramid” scheme, in which the first investors can get a big return on their money by simply paying them money received from subsequent investors. But it is only a matter of time before reality catches up with us, since the pyramid scheme is not actually investing any money or saving any money.

That is why a private insurance company that sold annuities based on a pyramid scheme would be prosecuted for fraud, and its officials put in prison. But you can’t put Congress in prison, even when that is what it deserves.

With the money running out in the so-called trust fund for Social Security, reality is beginning to break through the fantasies, and is closing in on us.

No one wants to pull the rug out from under people already retired and dependent on Social Security, or on people nearing retirement age, and expecting a pension that is just not going to be there.

We can be both realistic enough, and decent enough, to rescue older people who have been victimized by political fantasies. We can pay higher taxes temporarily to rescue them. But, there is no reason to bankrupt the country by keeping the fraud going forever.

 

Younger people can be allowed to opt out and arrange their own pension plans in the private sector, where the kind of irresponsible pyramid schemes that politicians set up are illegal.

But we don’t need to ruin the whole economy, in order to preserve the illusions created by toxic words like “entitlement.”

But we will anyways… 🙂

He’s the Establishment on a Label…

Self-Reliance

Somewhere between people fleeing the tyranny of monarchy and the class system and the unfair practices it fostered, the folks looking for the freedom to practice their deeply held religious beliefs – those ordinary human beings who only wanted a chance to control their own lives and fortunes with their wits and sweat and the adventurers who wanted to be a part of taming a new land – yes, somewhere between this breed of men and women and the present day, America’s train has jumped the track.

There was a time when a mule and 40 acres was considered a sufficient starting place for a person to stand on their own two feet and begin to build his fortune. A little hard work and good planning could result in a good lifestyle and a healthy nest egg to see him through his golden years.

There were no entitlements, no health insurance and no government subsidies for a failing crop or a bankrupt business venture. The only safety net available was the grace of God and what you could either grow, shoot or catch, and that was all you had to live on.

Of course, times have changed and modern man has modern problems, and the relatively soft lives we live have weakened the independent, pioneer spirit that was once so necessarily prevalent in those who conquered and settled this land.

The rank and file can no longer be expected to go out and face a wilderness with only a plow and a gun. But, all things considered, should the scale of independence and self-reliance have fallen to the point that so many of us think we can’t make it without assistance from an intrusive and increasingly socialistic government?

There are people who seem to think that the entitlements they receive grow on trees, that the bureaucracies just go into the orchards and harvest what they need.

A lot of these same people seem to think that anybody who has accomplished and accumulated anything has done so by hook and crook or by taking it away from people like them. They believe that they deserve a piece of the American Pie for doing nothing more than breathing, that there needs to be a mass redistribution of wealth, and they never consider that even now the tax rates in America have chased American industry to foreign shores, where the goods are manufactured and sold back to America without benefit of the jobs they provide.

They look at Obamacare as if it were a gift from a benevolent president, a guarantee of affordable, quality health care for all, and they never realize that the principle of “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” is very much in force. They will not realize it until the full ramifications of this deception reaches fruition and doctors start retiring, hospitals start closing down and the development and production of new medicines start to slow to a snail’s pace.

They look at “taxing the rich” – the perennial cry of the liberal block – as the just way to settle our fiscal problems, never realizing that it is a farce, that even if the total wealth of every millionaire and billionaire in the United States of America were confiscated it would not be enough to even pay the National Debt.

And the truly tragic part of that attitude is that they just don’t realize that money printed without true value to back it up is worthless. The entire monetary system of Planet Earth is in danger of imploding. If, and maybe, I should say, when, America’s currency becomes so devalued that the world will no longer accept it as the standard of international trade and America has to buy another nation’s currency to pay for all imports, the game changes radically.

When the rabid inflation that is unseen by most and hidden by the smoke and mirrors of politics, and is even now nipping at the heels of our tenuous fiscal debacle, catches up, and the Fed begins the interest rate climb – when our devalued currency rate will require the entire GNP just to pay the interest on the National Debt – entitlements, health care, food stamps and every other government assistance will be severely reduced or cut out altogether. The whole system of government dependence will fold like a house of cards and there will be confusion and violence in the streets that this country has never seen.

Because when the gravy train finally slows down and stops, many of the people who have ridden it for years simply won’t understand why it stopped. They will have become so dependent on government that they won’t have any idea how to carry on their lives without it. Look at what’s happening in Greece.

I’m certainly not smart enough to have the answers, but I am smart enough to see that if drastic measures are not taken immediately, if America doesn’t go back to work, if the politicians don’t stop spending, if the coming generations aren’t taught at least a modicum of self-reliance, America is doomed to the trash heap of history along with all the other nations whose train came off the tracks.

Maybe it’s a good time to buy a garden hoe and a gun.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Medicare @ 50 Part 2

Entitlements: Medicare’s latest annual report, issued days before its 50th anniversary, seems to show that, thanks to ObamaCare, it has a long and healthy future in front of it. But it’s not true. Not by a long shot.

President Obama’s top economists, Jeff Zients and Jason Furman, claim that the new Medicare Trustees Report “confirms the major progress that has been made in recent years in improving the financial position of the Medicare program.”

Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will remain solvent until 2030, they say, which is 13 years longer than it was before ObamaCare. Plus, they say, growth in per-beneficiary spending was just 2.3% last year, “less than one-half of the 5.5 average rate from 2000 to 2010.”

But this sunny outlook doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

Medicare is still a fiscal time bomb. As the nearby chart shows, its hospital insurance deficits will hit $110 billion in 2031 — the first year after its trust fund runs out of money. Annual deficits will eventually top $1 trillion a year.

Even that is a fantasy, since it assumes ObamaCare’s steep Medicare provider payment cuts actually happen. Even Medicare’s trustees are skeptical.

Buried in an appendix, the report admits that “there is substantial uncertainty” regarding the likelihood that those cuts will be feasible.

They are so deep, the report says, that what Medicare pays will “fall increasingly below providers’ costs.” By 2019, for example, as many as 15% of hospitals will have negative Medicare margins, it says. And the only way to avoid such massive losses would be for doctors and hospitals to “generate and sustain unprecedented levels of productivity gains.”

Washington has already shown that it won’t swallow such Medicare cuts. Soon after a 1997 payment cut plan — called “Sustainable Growth Rate” — went into effect, Congress repeatedly nullified it. In the likely event that Congress cancels the ObamaCare-imposed cuts, then “the actual future costs for Medicare may exceed the projections shown in this report, possibly by substantial amounts,” the trustees say.

Medicare remains in financial jeopardy and is in need of serious reform. Any politician who pretends otherwise is doing taxpayers and retirees a huge disservice. (IBD)

It’s A Trap!

John Hawkins: When liberals look at the poor, first and foremost, they see people who will vote for them in exchange for goodies. This gives liberals a perverse incentive to keep as many Americans mired in poverty as humanly possible.

This is why liberals are always willing to make a government handout a little bigger, easier to qualify for, or to make sure as many people as possible are using it. They want poor people to remain poor – and no wonder. Show me a ghetto in America and I will show you an area that votes heavily Democrat despite the fact that its condition never seems to improve.

Incidentally, that’s just how liberals like it. If you’re poor today, they’d like you to remain poor next year, the next ten years or even for the rest of your life. Then, not only do liberals get your vote, they get to feel better about themselves because they’re “helping” a “pitiful, helpless failure” like you. It’s the best of all worlds for liberals: they get to feel “generous,” it helps keep them in power, and other people pick up the bill.

Of course, it’s certainly not the best of all worlds for the poor.

Having been poor, I can tell you that it’s no picnic. Nobody likes living in a dangerous neighborhood, struggling to pay the rent or not knowing where the money will come from if his car breaks down. This is where liberals try get the fishhook in your jaw. They offer “free” money, “free food,” “free” housing. When you’re struggling, that looks pretty good.

While I have also been desperately poor in my life I have never taken government assistance while I was poor. I was nearly homeless for several years while working 129 hours a day 5 days a week because of debts accumulated. It never occurred to me to seek assistance from the government. It just wasn’t my mind set. It was my problem, It had to be my solution, not expecting other people to “fix” it for me.

But, what many poor people eventually realize is that all the “free” things liberals want to give them are part of a trap. Sure, government benefits make life a little easier, but they also help keep you poor long term. Being on the dole undercuts your motivation to change your situation. It encourages you to treat receiving handouts from the government as a primary source of income. In fact, many people start to worry that if they do TOO WELL, they’ll lose their “free” benefits.

On the other hand, conservatives don’t believe anyone is destined to remain poor.

We believe if you make good decisions, work hard and are willing to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you can at least join the middle class. Unlike the Democrats, Republicans get most of their votes from the middle class; so unlike them, we’re incentivized to help poor Americans improve their situation financially. The same poor person who won’t vote Republican today may vote for the GOP tomorrow if he is off the dole, has a better job and is living in a better neighborhood.

And that doesn’t involve being a career burger flipper and expecting my employer to pay me $15/hr to do it. IMHO.

So conservatives do believe in a social safety net, but we believe it should be temporary.

It’s not a hammock on the beach where they serve you mai tai’s until dawn. It’s a net, not a bed.

We don’t want anyone to become dependent on the government or to take advantage of the system. In other words, we don’t want the safety net to become a hammock.

🙂
That’s why we want people to work for welfare, think drug addicts should be ineligible and believe there should be limits to how long someone can stay on a program.

We agree with Ronald Reagan who once said, “I believe the best social program is a job.”

Want to know why conservatives oppose high corporate taxes and want to keep taxes low in general? Why we don’t like the minimum wage? Why we try to cut regulations as much as possible?

It’s mostly about jobs. If the economy is growing, thriving and creating lots of jobs, it helps everybody, including the poor. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 may help a few people live more comfortably in poverty, but it will also lead to the loss of starter jobs for millions of poor people who desperately need the experience so they can improve their situations.

The government will NEVER lift you out of poverty, but a good job can. That’s where we believe we should be focusing our efforts. That’s why conservatives have long touted enterprise zones that allow businesses to have tax breaks in poor neighborhoods. The more businesses that move into low-income areas, the more poor Americans can get jobs.

Conservatives also believe in being tough on crime and protecting the Second Amendment rights of Americans. Nobody benefits more from that than the poor who are often trapped in crime-ridden neighborhoods that Democrats haven’t bothered to clean up, despite being in charge for decades.

They just get you to blame white rich people who obviously “hate” you. Vote for me, here’s a handout to show “I care”. 🙂

Conservatives don’t believe there’s anything shameful about being poor, but we also believe the best thing we can do to help poor Americans is to make it possible for them leave poverty behind for good. A liberal “success story” is someone who gets lots of government benefits while he lives in poverty for decades. A conservative “success story” is a poor American who no longer needs government benefits because he got a good job and moved into the middle class.

That’s why liberalism is for poor people who are content to remain poor and conservatism is for poor people who want to make a better life for themselves.

Amen.

Just remember, to a Liberal that means you’re mean, you hate poor people, woman and children, you kick the dog and steal candy from babies and push grandma out of her house and over a cliff because your Snidley Whiplash and you are greedy, heartless, and maniacal. 🙂

Not Helpful

My first job paid $4.35/ hr. I was a “detailer” for Avis Rental Cars. That’s a fancy word for Window Washer.

That’s what I did all day.

After 18 months of that I decided to go back to College and get a degree.Which I did.

Then after college, got my first job in a Call Center. At 5.35/hr. But then I started moving up.

You don’t move up from a Window Washer. And at least one guy I worked with at that job wasn’t looking to move up from it.

It was slow. It was hard. It wasn’t glamorous or profitable. But eventually I made enough to buy this house. But it was hardly overnight. And I’m hardly set for life. I still have to perform or else.

You wanna know what the punch line to this is?

Adjusted for inflation that $4.35/hr would now be $8.82 because of inflation caused by the government and other entities.

So Obama wants to raise the minimum wage to be effectively the same as that was all those years ago.

So it’s about the politics of “caring” not about the actual problem – inflation. Especially inflation from devaluing the currency because of all the spending and borrowing.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The unemployment rate for teens is at 23%, and the rate for unskilled workers is at 12%. Why does President Obama propose raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour and indexing it for inflation, as he stated in his State of the Union Address?

Obama and his advisors seem to believe that if the minimum wage were raised and then indexed, all workers would retain their jobs. But this is not the case.

Between 2007 and 2009, the federal hourly minimum wage rose to $7.25 in three steps from the $5.15 rate that had prevailed for a decade. If the wage were raised to $9 and then indexed for inflation, it would rise every year.

It sounds compassionate to alleviate poverty by mandating that employers raise wages, but employers often replace low-skill workers with machines. Think self-checkout machines in supermarkets, or computerized call centers.

Or, try a thought experiment — would you have your job if the minimum wage were $50 an hour? Probably not.

At its current level, the minimum wage disproportionately affects teens and low-skill workers, many of whom qualify only for entry-level slots.

University of California (Irvine) economists David Neumark and J.M. Ian Salas, together with Federal Reserve Board economist William Wascher, have written extensively on the effects of the minimum wage on employment. In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper published in January, they conclude that “minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others.”

They specifically mention that a higher minimum wage results in more unemployment for teens and low-skill workers.

Why is it that some studies, such as those by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers chairman Alan Krueger, have found that increases in the minimum wage do not affect employment in the restaurant industry?

Two reasons, according to Neumark and his coauthors. First, many restaurant workers are paid above minimum wage. Second, a higher minimum wage can encourage employers to substitute more-skilled employees for less-skilled employees, so that total unemployment in that industry does not decline substantially.

Minimum wage workers are overwhelmingly young and work part-time. See the Labor Department’s Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers.

Two-thirds of minimum wage earners worked part-time in 2011, the latest year available. Only 3% of hourly wage earners earn minimum wage or less.

Workers under the age of 25 made up about half of the 3.8 million workers who earned at or below the minimum wage in 2011. Employed teenagers are seven times more likely to be among the minimum wage earners than workers older than 25.

Another 11 million workers earned between $7.26 and $8.99. Some will be in danger of losing their jobs if the minimum wage is increased.

In his State of the Union Address, Obama said that a full-time minimum-wage worker makes $14,500 a year. That’s 1.3 million workers, in a labor force of 156 million, about eight-tenths of 1%. But this understates actual income, because it does not include transfer payments.

As Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute has shown, the Earned Income Tax Credit adds to the minimum wage. Read Michael Saltsman.

Then you also add in your Obama Phone, Your Obama Internet….

In addition to the EITC, the value of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly food stamps, has risen over the past 20 years, increasing the resources of low-income workers. (See chart.)

In 1992, the hourly minimum wage was $4.25. For a family with one parent and two children, the value of the earned income tax credit was 69 cents, and the value of food stamps was just over a dollar, for total income of $5.96 an hour. (Other possible benefits include housing and Medicaid, depending on the state.)

Fast forward to 2012. The minimum wage was $7.25 an hour. For the same family, the EITC rose to $2.62, and the food stamps program added $1.67, for a total of $11.54. Assuming 2,000 hours of work annually, and including the EITC, the family makes not $14,500, but $19,736. This family also qualified for food stamps, bringing the total family income to $23,072.

Unlike increases in the minimum wage, these government transfers do not discourage employers from hiring.

The minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, plus the mandatory employer’s share of social security, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation taxes, brings the hourly employer cost to $8, even without benefits. Raising the hourly minimum wage to $9 will bring the cost to employers to about $10.

And in 2014, employers with more than 49 workers who do not offer the right kind of health insurance will have to pay a penalty of $2,000 per worker per year, further increasing costs and discouraging hiring. Many are already cutting back or reducing workers’ hours, because no penalty is owed on those working less than 30 hours weekly.

Unemployment rates for teens and low-skill workers rose faster than others in the recession. The adult unemployment rate stood at 7.3% in January 2012. That’s over 3 percentage points higher than the 3.8% rate in December 2007, five years earlier, at the start of the recession. But the January 2012 unemployment rate for teens was about 6 percentage points higher than December 2007, at 23%.

Employers now only employ workers who can produce $8 an hour or more of goods or services. Under Obama’s proposal, they would employ only those who could produce $10 an hour, an amount that would rise every year. The government can mandate steadily rising minimum wages, but not steadily rising teen skills and productivity.

As minimum wages rise, employers change technologies or hire more skilled workers.

Forbidding employment of those whose skills aren’t worth $10 an hour prevents workers getting their foot on the bottom of the career ladder. Obama is essentially proposing to take away the right to work for low-skill workers.

Most American employers have to pay more than minimum wage just to attract and hold the workers they need. Almost 140 million workers now earn above minimum wage, not because of federal or state law, but because that is the only way that firms can attract and keep employees with skills.

Instead of more money for youth employment, why not expand the federal minimum wage exception for teens? Under federal law, employers are allowed to pay teens $4.25 an hour for 90 consecutive calendar days, or until their 20th birthday, at which point the wage has to revert to $7.25 an hour.

The law is not simple. Employers have to show that teen workers don’t displace others. If the state minimum laws don’t specifically include the teen exception, then teens have to be paid the regular minimum — and the large states, such as California and New York, don’t mention teens. Ninety calendar days might cover a summer job, but if teens want to continue the job during the school year, employers have to pay them the standard wage.

Youth unemployment is a serious social problem in some European countries, such as France (27%), Spain (55%), and Italy (37%). These governments have taken every possible step to discourage the young from working short of criminalizing work: wages are regulated to be high, and it is costly to hire a new worker and even more costly to let one go. In these countries, young people have a much harder time getting started up the career ladder than their American counterparts.

America does not want to go down this road. Working at an early age teaches useful skills, transferable to future jobs, such as getting to work on time, staying the whole day, and putting up with unpleasant colleagues.

Increasing the hourly minimum wage to $9 and indexing it for inflation is bad news for teens and low-skill workers who deserve a better opportunity, and it is bad news for America where we cannot afford to further cripple our economy. (Market Watch)

But because he “cares” he will make your boss fire you because he can’t afford you any longer and that is your Boss’s fault because he’s just a greedy capitalist pig.

But at least now you have 2 years+ of unemployment, Food Stamps, you could move back in with your parents, Your Obama Phone and Internet so Life is good… 🙂

Veni Vidi Vici

Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama’s health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.

ObamaCare allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.

For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.

There rich, I’m sure they can afford it. After all, they voted for Obama because of his Health Care and their Entitlements….

Younger smokers could be charged lower penalties under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. But older smokers could face a heavy hit on their household budgets at a time in life when smoking-related illnesses tend to emerge.

Workers covered on the job would be able to avoid tobacco penalties by joining smoking cessation programs, because employer plans operate under different rules. But experts say that option is not guaranteed to smokers trying to purchase coverage individually. (DC)

So what next after Smokers?
First they came for the smokers
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a smoker.
Then they came for the junk food
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a concerned
Then they came for the “fat” people,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t fat (I thought).
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Meat? Salt? Drinks? What won’t they stop at, in the name of “health care”?

Nothing. Why would they. It’s for your own good! and it makes them “feel” good.

We are from the Government and we are here to help you… 🙂

Obama: Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But central authority to a liberal IS the answer to everything. And Entitlements are the answer to “fairness” and “equality” and “compassion” and success is bad (except when you fund their political campaigns so they can do even more “good” for themselves and thus for you…:) )
“In 1960, social-welfare programs accounted for less than a third of all federal spending. Today, it counts for nearly two-thirds of federal spending. Welfare spending is nearly twice as much as defense, justice and everything else Washington does combined.” Megyn Kelly
But if you cut anything other than Rich people’s loopholes and the Military you’re a heartless, racist, evil bastard who just want old people and kids to starve and die!! 🙂

Obama: The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.

So if we have 15 more Solyndras that is better than one evil Keystone Pipeline. Oil is evil Oil companies, doubly so. So what if it’s cheaper and more efficient and everyone uses it now we don’t care.

So what if the technology is not there. It makes us feel superior.

So what if the Chinese kicked our asses on it.

So what if it Many , Many Times MORE expensive. So what. It’s Better for you. 🙂

It makes us feel better about ourselves. And you will too, or else!

California has been a leader in Renewable Energy production, in part due to federal and state level policies that provide incentives for producers of renewable power. However, a new report found that California’s Energy policies will raise state power rates and associated costs by nearly 33 percent.

The report by the free-market Pacific Research Institute specifically focuses on the additional costs imposed by a state mandate that requires 33 percent of its power come from renewable sources, like wind, solar and geothermal by 2020. PRI estimates that the California renewable portfolio standard will be an additional $5 billion in 2020.

The mandate represents an implicit 27 percent tax on power generation in the state due to the “the forced substitution of expensive power in place of cheaper electricity, particularly in terms of transmission, backup, and generation costs.”

“Moreover, this implicit tax to be imposed upon the California economy will grow each year as the size of the electricity market expands and the RPS requirement forces ever-greater amounts of high-cost power onto the market,” writes PRI senior fellow and report author Benjamin Zycher.

“This perverse effect inexorably will be reflected fully in rising rates paid by consumers, whether directly or indirectly,” Zycher continues.

The costs to California consumers in 2020 will rise by more than 13 percent as a result of the renewable fuel mandate. However, the report notes that even without the mandate, state power rates would rise by nearly 20 percent due to “various capital investments driven by both economic and regulatory factors,” and because of the state’s cap-and-trade program.

All of these policies taken together will cause power rates and costs to rise nearly 33 percent between now and 2020, according to the report.
California already suffers from high retail electricity rates relative to the rest of the country. PRI reports that retail rates in the Golden State are up to 131 percent higher than rates in the Pacific Northwest and 70 percent higher than rates in the Mountain region. In fact, California rates are 53 percent higher than the U.S. as a whole.

“This adverse effect is certain to worsen the other important disadvantages that various California public policies have created in terms of competitive dynamics with other states,” writes Zycher.

State residents are already being hit hard if they do not install solar devices onto their rooftops. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Californians who don’t have solar rooftop installations paid an extra $1.3 billion in yearly power bills.

“The higher costs to be borne by the California economy will not be offset even in part by economic benefits,” concludes Zycher. “That the rising costs to be imposed upon the private sector might engender greater political opposition to the RPS requirements may be a source of hope for policy reform.” (DC)

But don’t worry this won’t hurt the poor and the elderly…and imagine if you’re a smoker too! 🙂
And do you know where the majority of the electric Power from the Palo Verde NUCLEAR Power Station west of Phoenix goes to?
One Guess.
California. 🙂

Gotta love Liberals. Otherwise taking that line from Shakespeare about killing all the lawyers starts to come to  mind. (kidding…no need for Janet to send her goons to my door).

Sort of. 🙂

And lastly, remember when Liberal were insane to destroy Bush (for many reasons even today) over his “handling” of Katrina.

Well, did you know there are  Super storm Sandy victims that are still freezing this winter because of a lack of response by the Government?

But since they are predominately Liberals I’m sure they will give Obama and company a pass right?

It’s no big deal.

Not even a $2500 Debit Card… 🙂

The superstorm destroyed their homes — and the cold weather is playing havoc with their lives.

Sandy-ravaged homeowners have been driven to extremes as they try to survive in houses that are essentially construction sites.

“It’s colder here because of the water,” said Mary Lou Foley, a Breezy Point, Queens, resident who has spent the past week huddling under a slew of comforters and carrying a space heater from room to room.

“It’s 18 degrees in the city, but it feels like 5 because of the wind. It’s just too cold,” the 56-year-old said Thursday.

She has been staying here for the past month without heat, sleeping on a comforter on the floor but she has remained optimistic and says she is “happy.”

I bet if it were Bush Or even Romney,, she wouldn’t be. 🙂

Foley is one of the lucky ones because she has power in some parts of her partially rebuilt house, allowing her to use an electric heater.

But she can only plug in one at a time.

“If I plug in two heaters, I’m afraid I will blow a fuse. So I plug in one heater and try to stay close to it,” she said. “I have to do this until I have power restored.”

Construction crews are working as fast as they can in Sandy-afflicted areas like the Rockaways, but no one can slow down Mother Nature.

But someone has sure slowed down the “outrage”. 🙂

Where are the FEMA trailers that were demanded by the Left the last time?

“It’s freezing in my house,” the mom said. “I’m hearing a lot of horror stories from my neighbors. Their pipes are bursting. It’s that cold.”

Eddie Saman, 47, of New Dorp Beach in Staten Island, insulated his walls with donated blankets in a futile attempt to trap his radiator’s weak heat.

Where’s the outrage?

The Congress passed a relief bill, half of it was Pork for NASCAR, banks and other ‘constituents’ of importance.

Where’s the outrage?

Let’s be “fair” shall we. If you want government to run your life for you because you’re a moron, then you should demand they do a better job of it, just to be “fair” and “equal”… 🙂

The New America

John Stossel: The Obama administration now proposes to spend millions more on handouts, despite ample evidence of their perverse effects.

I would argue that that is exactly WHY HE IS DOING IT and he knows exactly why he’s doing it. As usual, it’s political, not economical.

The more dependents, the more votes for more dependents, the more addicts for the never-ending hamster wheel to the promised land.

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says, “The single most important thing HUD does is provide rental assistance to America’s most vulnerable families — and the Obama administration is proposing bold steps to meet their needs.” They always propose “bold steps.”

In this case, HUD wants to spend millions more to renew Section 8 housing vouchers that help poor people pay rent.

Isn’t it curious 🙂 that Section 8 housing just happens to be named similar to : The term Section 8 refers to a category of discharge from the United States military when judged mentally unfit for duty.  (It’s what Klinger was trying for for 11 years on M*A*S*H).

Coincidence? I doubt it. 🙂

The Section 8 program ballooned during the ’90s to “solve” a previous government failure: crime-ridden public housing. Rent vouchers allow the feds to disperse tenants from failed projects into private residencies. There, poor people would learn good habits from middle-class people.

It was a reasonable idea. But, as always, there were unintended consequences.

“On paper, Section 8 seems like it should be successful,” says Donald Gobin, a Section 8 landlord in New Hampshire. “But unless tenants have some unusual fire in their belly, the program hinders upward mobility.”

Goo, because then the low-information drug addicted voter votes to keep the gravy train going. That’s good for the politician. And what’s good for the politician MUST be good for all of us because they “care” and it’s only “fair”.

Gobin complains that his tenants are allowed to use Section 8 subsides for an unlimited amount of time. There is no work requirement. Recipients can become comfortably dependent on government assistance.

Isn’t that the goal? 🙂

In Gobin’s over 30 years of renting to Section 8 tenants, he has seen only one break free of the program. Most recipients stay on Section 8 their entire lives. They use it as a permanent crutch.

Government’s rules kill the incentive to succeed.

But who cares, they vote for the politicians who best kisses their ass. Success and struggle are over-rated when you can get others to do it for you. 🙂

Section 8 handouts are meant to be generous enough that tenants may afford a home defined by HUD as decent, safe and sanitary. In its wisdom, the bureaucracy has ruled that “decent, safe and sanitary” may require subsidies as high as $2,200 per month. But because of that, Section 8 tenants often get to live in nicer places than those who pay their own way.

Well, isn’t that “fair”?

True, the worst rent I ever had was $1,200 a month in very nice neighborhood (allegedly I had 2 roommates to share the burden with at the time but I guess they thought I was the government and I had to do all on my own–that didn’t last).

They deserve it right, because it’s only “fair”. 🙂

Kevin Spaulding is an MIT graduate in Boston who works long hours as an engineer, and struggles to cover his rent and student loans. Yet all around him, he says, he sees people who don’t work but live better than he does.

“It doesn’t seem right,” he says. “I work very hard but can only afford a lower-end apartment. There are nonworking people on my street who live in better places than I do because they are on Section 8.”

But if you complain about it, you’re just a mean old capitalist who just wants them to be homeless! You cad!

It’s not “fair”! 🙂

Spaulding understands why his neighbors don’t look for jobs. The subsidies are attractive — they cover 70 to 100 percent of rent and utilities. If Section 8 recipients accumulate money or start to make more, they lose their subsidy.
 “Is there a real incentive for the tenants to go to work? No!” says Gobin. “They have a relatively nice house and do not have to pay for it.”

Then you have your Obama Phone, Your Obama Internet, Your Obama Food Stamps, Your Obama Welfare Check. Why would you ruin a good thing like that with something as hard and mean as a JOB!!  <<shudder in terror>>

That’s ridiculous. Besides, the world owes me . Why? Just Because the politicians I voted for said so! 🙂

Once people are reliant on Section 8 assistance, many do everything in their power to keep it. Some game the system by working under the table so that they do not lose the subsidy. One of Gobin’s lifetime Section 8 tenants started a cooking website. She made considerable money from it, so she went to great lengths to hide the site from her case manager, running it under a different name.

Now see, that’s capitalism! Gaming the system, everyone does it. Especially “rich” people so why shouldn’t I do it. It benefits me, and that’s all that matters.

It’s a lot easier than the alternative.

“Here’s a lady that could definitely work. She actually showed me how to get benefits and play the system,” says Gobin.

Just like “rich” people, right? But with less struggle and less discrimination. 🙂

Although Section 8 adds to our debt while encouraging people to stay dependent, it isn’t going away. HUD says it will continue to “make quality housing possible for every American.”

Because that’s “fair” and you don’t wanna be mean and see all these people homeless now do you? 🙂
Despite $20 billion spent on the program last year, demand for more rental assistance remains strong. There is a long waitlist to receive Section 8 housing in every state. In New York City alone, 120,000 families wait.

Some are truly needy, but many recipients of income transfers are far from poor.

America will soon be $17 trillion in debt, and our biggest federal expense is income transfers. They are justified on the grounds that some of that helps the needy. But we don’t help the needy by encouraging dependency.

Government grows. Dependency grows.

And that’s Exactly why they do it in the first place. That’s a good thing for everyone involved in the incestuous relationship.

It’s just not good for everyone else.

Screw You!  I got mine and YOU get to pay for it! that’s the New American Motto.

In case you thought there was no risk of your taxes going up again, think again. Washington isn’t done with you yet.

Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, want lawmakers to consider a fresh set of tax increases in the next several weeks when they discuss whether to cut spending. 

Think about that for a moment. While they are discussing cutting spending (which they won’t do) they want more tax increases.

But much of what Obama is talking about is raising tax revenue without actually raising tax rates. In Washington-speak, lawmakers will try to collect more tax money by closing tax loopholes, perhaps limiting popular tax deductions and to some degree changing the way citizens pay into the popular Medicare and Social Security programs. (mcclatchydc).

The Tax that isn’t a tax so they can say it’s not a tax per se.

Sounds like Gaming the System. Just like the Section 8 housing.

Funny how that happened…

After all the “fiscal cliff” deal is expected  to raise about $600 billion over 10 years. That’s 60 Billion a year. At the current rate of over-spending that pays for 12 days!

What a Deal! Stick it to “the rich” for virtually nothing and then come back for more!

And if you’re denied just complain, again, that you’re opponent is a “rich” loving asshole!

Funny how that happened… 🙂

According to the CBO, deficits in just the first three months of this fiscal year already add up to $293 billion.

Which means that, despite Obama’s massive tax hikes, deficits will likely top $1 trillion for the fifth year in a row, and Obama will have added $7.5 trillion to the nation’s debt since taking office.

The problem isn’t just that the country is borrowing too much.

It’s that Washington is spending too much on programs that increase dependency on government. (IBD)

But that’s why they ARE doing it. The incestuous drug-addicts are killing everyone else but they don’t care because it benefits them NOW.

And after all, that’s all that matters. What benefits ME, right here, right now. Screw everyone and everything else!

A new Heritage Foundation study finds that the number of people getting federal benefit checks — through Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, subsidized housing, tuition aid or countless other entitlement programs — has shot up 62% since 1988.

That’s more than twice the rate of population growth.

As a result, more than four in 10 Americans are dependent on the federal government for financial help of one sort or another.

And they Vote!

Welcome to the Have-Not Drug Addicts and their “fair” political fellow drug addicts running the asylum.

All you suckers out there slogging along working hard trying to make something of yourself, keep doing it, because grandma needs a new flat screen, SUCKER! 🙂

 

But I Can’t Stop Now!

“At one point several weeks ago,” Boehner told the Wall Street Journal, “the president said to me, ‘We don’t have a spending problem.'”

That would be news to Obama’s debt commission, which in its final report made clear that spending is the driving force behind the nation’s debt crisis.

Here’s what the report said: “Even after the economy recovers, federal spending is projected to increase faster than revenues, so the government will have to continue borrowing money to spend.”

The panel added, “Over the long run, as the baby boomers retire and health care costs continue to grow, the situation will become far worse.”

And it recommended: “We should cut all excess spending — including defense, domestic programs, entitlement spending, and spending in the tax code.” (IBD)

But the Hard Core leftist meme seems to be that we can’t not pay the bills we already have so let’s ignore the spending problem.

That’s like saying I’m a shop-alcholic and I spend $3000 day (but take in a 300) and puts $10,000 on the credit card and then says “but I can’t stop now because I have bills to pay!!!”

It’s not rational.

So what we get is irrational partisan, protect-the-party at all costs, screw everyone else.

By 2022, federal revenues will top 19% of GDP, which is significantly higher than the post-World War II average. But spending will exceed 22%, and keep climbing.

Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office report concluded that spending is “on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path” and blamed entitlements.

And countless Congressional Budget Office reports have documented how, left unchecked, federal entitlement programs will soon swamp the entire budget.

Apparently Obama didn’t read any of those, either.

When it comes to federal spending, Obama is like the alcoholic who says that the only drinking problem he has is when he can’t get a drink.

And we all drown in debt because of it.

The Following is from The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry about children of alcoholics.

A child being raised by a parent or caregiver who is suffering from alcohol abuse may have a variety of conflicting emotions that need to be addressed in order to avoid future problems. They are in a difficult position because they cannot go to their own parents for support. Some of the feelings can include the following:

• Guilt. The child may see himself or herself as the main cause of the mother’s or father’s drinking.
• Anxiety.  The child may worry constantly about the situation at home.  He or she may fear the alcoholic parent will become sick or injured, and may also fear fights and violence between the parents.
• Embarrassment.  Parents may give the child the message that there is a terrible secret at home.  The ashamed child does not invite friends home and is afraid to ask anyone for help.
• Inability to have close relationships.  Because the child has been disappointed by the drinking parent many times, he or she often does not trust others.
• Confusion.  The alcoholic parent will change suddenly from being loving to angry, regardless of the child’s behavior.  A  regular daily schedule, which is very important for a child, does not exist because bedtimes and mealtimes are constantly changing.
• Anger.  The child feels anger at the alcoholic parent for drinking, and may be angry at the non-alcoholic parent for lack of support and protection.
• Depression.  The child feels lonely and helpless to change the situation.

Although the child tries to keep the alcoholism a secret, teachers, relatives, other adults, or friends may sense that something is wrong.  Teachers and caregivers should be aware that the following behaviors may signal a drinking or other problem at home:

• Failure in school; truancy
• Lack of friends; withdrawal from classmates
• Delinquent behavior, such as stealing or violence
• Frequent physical complaints, such as headaches or stomachaches
• Abuse of drugs or alcohol; or
• Aggression towards other children
• Risk taking behaviors
• Depression or suicidal thoughts or behavior

Now consider the denial by the left of the problem, the hatred they spew for anyone even mentioning it and wanting to “fix it”. The Guilt trips, the bribes, the fear, the anxiety of yet another Crisis that doesn’t go to waste.

Fear, Guilt, Intimidation, Anger, Irrational Behavior, Denial…sound familiar?

Even though, not all children of alcoholic parents are adversely affected. An overwhelming number of evidence has shown that alcohol dependence runs in families. So, children of alcoholic parents can often time find themselves following in their parents’ footsteps

The one who don’t of course are ridiculed as “morons” “stupid” “violent” “racist” “neo-con” “baggers”  and you don’t want to be one of those now do you! 🙂

So like most authoritarian dictators you educate them young into your ways before they know it, they are drug addicts just like you.

Welcome to the 21st Century drunk on the power of money and the power that money brings. And all we want is another drink…

And what we really need is an Adult Intervention because we are dying of alcohol poisoning and our kids are drowning because of it.

 

Throttle “Forward”

Social Security ran a $47.8 billion deficit in fiscal 2012, drawing in even less than it paid out last year, with just 1.67 workers supporting each retiree. But instead of confronting the truth, the left still denies reality.

According to official Social Security Administration data this week, the program’s incoming cash from the working population and their employers came to $725 billion in fiscal 2012 while it paid out $773 billion in cash and overhead.

That’s as the number of retirees and disabled using the system grow 10,000 a day to more than 57 million people currently, according to research by CNS News editor Terence P. Jeffrey.

And the trust fund? With so many new beneficiaries, the Social Security trustees say it’s fallen to just $2.7 trillion and is set to run out in 2033 — not 2036 as projected just last year.

Since 2007, Social Security has moved from an $81 billion surplus to a $58 billion deficit — a swing of $139 billion into red ink, according to a news report by IBD’s own Jed Graham. Over the next 20 years, Social Security deficits alone will hike total U.S. debt by 18% of GDP.

That means only 75% of promised benefits can be paid out from the trust fund through 2086, and that’s after a legally mandated 22% cut in benefits. So like France and other western nations with similar shortfalls, either taxes must rise or benefits must be cut further.

That’s a picture of unsustainability. But with millions of Americans depending on the program, it also ought to raise fiscal alarms in any responsible government.

Incredibly, under President Obama, it’s not. The left has created a cottage industry of opposing any meaningful effort to end the rapidly accelerating slide downward, with all sorts of denialist arguments against basic math.

The AFL-CIO, which runs various activist operations dedicated to halting any reform of Social Security, basically denies there’s any crisis. It insists the trust fund — which is loaded with government IOUs, not money — is enough, and refers to any call to fix the broken system as “sky is falling Social Security coverage.”

The union claims that interest earned on government IOUs in the trust fund will be sufficient to finance the mess and advocates tax hikes until eternity to the extent the trust fund fails. “Flash! Social Security Is Not Doomed,” its website blares.

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum has a more subtle argument — that in the past, Social Security taxes were purposely too high. This benefited the rich, he argues, who got lower income taxes as a result.

Coming tax hikes will shrink the Social Security deficit and benefit beneficiaries — yet the money will come from the federal government anyway.

But these are just end-runs around reality as we approach what should be called the Social Security cliff.

Republicans — most recently presidential candidate Mitt Romney — have put forward proposals to fix the system. Unfortunately, they only included cutting benefits and raising the retirement age — the sort of “austerity” that triggered riots in Greece, France and Spain.

So what should they do? The biggest arrow in the GOP quiver has always been privatization, a bold “Chilean model” proposal similar to the ones unveiled by candidates Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain.

In them, Social Security would be converted to a system of private accounts, something pioneered by the city of Galveston, Texas decades ago and later by the entire nation of Chile in 1980, both to spectacular results.

Today, neither Chile nor Galveston have pension debt weighing their economies down. And retirees pull in hefty pensions from investment funds that showed average returns of 7% to 10% over 30 years.

But private accounts require political will — made all the harder in the U.S. by two failed efforts to enact such a change by Presidents Clinton and Bush in the 1990s, when the transition would have been easier, but the political recognition of the problem was much lower.

Though politically challenging, privatization would still be the best solution for younger workers. Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan put this in his original fiscal road map. He should consider reviving the idea as the fiscal picture grows uglier, as it no doubt will.

Social Security has been seen as the most soluble of the entitlement programs, but the fact that it will soon add another 2.4% of GDP to the U.S.’ already massive deficits means it can’t be ignored. It’s time for serious solutions to be put back on the table. (IBD)

But if you do you’re a heartless, grannie-over-the-cliff, capitalist meanie white guy!

When David Letterman asked Obama about the size of the national debt, Obama couldn’t even make a guess. It seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind.

But Obama’s cynicism about the debt doesn’t change the fact that it is a looming national crisis. It’s undeniable that our entitlement obligations are growing at an unsustainable pace and that our national debt and the annual mandatory interest payments on it are reaching alarming heights.

The budget debates essentially boil down to the Republicans’ desire to return the nation to financial health vs. Obama’s desire to use the government’s taxing and spending powers as tools to remake America in his image rather than to facilitate economic growth or balance the budget.

Before you write off my comments as unfairly partisan, I ask you to ponder Obama’s major negotiating demands. He is insistent, is he not, on increasing tax rates and reducing deductions for higher-income earners, even though it’s an objective fact that Obama’s plan to raise taxes on just a small percentage of Americans would not generate enough revenue to make a significant dent in our nation’s deficits or debt. He has to be demanding this change, then, for other reasons. I can think of none, other than his idea of fairness, by which he means punishing the rich, even if it won’t improve the economy or our fiscal picture.

Further, he has stubbornly resisted meaningful spending cuts and has absolutely continued to dig his heels in over GOP efforts to reform entitlements to avoid our nation’s impending financial meltdown.

On top of all this, Obama wants $80 billion more in “stimulus” spending. Can you believe this? In budget negotiations that are supposed to be about fiscal sanity, he’s wedded to yet more federal spending of money we don’t have. Finally, he is demanding that Republicans surrender their authority to set limits on future spending through budget ceilings.

As you can see, Obama’s goal of fundamentally remaking America happens to be nearly incompatible with economic growth and national solvency.

Don’t you see? There is no way Obama can do what he was born to do — remake America in his image — unless he continues to implement the very policies that drove us toward this cliff in the first place. Obama’s ideology compels him to keep spending borrowed money and increase growth-suppressing tax rates on the very people whose productivity is imperative for economic growth. Maybe Obama cares some about economic growth and our national deficits and debt. Maybe not. Either way, he’s tied to policies that harm both. (David Limbaugh)

But at least you can warm yourself by the fires of hate that it was all Bush’s fault and still is to this day. 🙂

Give the People What they Want III: The Big Government Happy Meal

Mark Steyn: Nailed it!

Previously on The Perils of Pauline:

Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape?

Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress’s decision to set up . . . a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can’t, form a committee. Those who really can’t, form a Super Committee — and then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by “automatic sequestration.”

Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: It would chop off everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the course of a decade the sequestration cuts would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about what the United States government currently borrows every month. No sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month’s worth of debt over the course of a decade.

So now we have the latest cliffhanger: the Fiscal Cliff, below which lies a bottomless abyss of sequestration, tax-cut-extension expiries, Alternative Minimum Tax adjustments, new Obamacare taxes, the expiry of the deferment of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, as well as the expiry of the deferment of the implementation of the adjustment of the correction of the extension of the reduction to the proposed increase of the Alternative Minimum Growth Sustainability Reduction Rate. They don’t call it a yawning chasm for nothing.

As America hangs by its fingernails wiggling its toesies over the vertiginous plummet to oblivion, what can save her now? An Even More Super Committee? A bipartisan agreement in which Republicans agree to cave and Democrats agree not to laugh at them too much? 🙂 (ROTFL!) That could be just the kind of farsighted reach-across-the-aisle compromise that rescues the nation until next week’s thrill-packed episode when America’s strapped into the driver’s seat of a runaway Chevy Volt careering round the hairpin bends on full charge, or trapped in an abandoned subdivision overrun by foreclosure zombies.

I suppose it’s possible to take this recurring melodrama seriously, but there’s no reason to. The problem facing the United States government is that it spends over a trillion dollars a year that it doesn’t have. If you want to make that number go away, you need either to reduce spending or to increase revenue. With the best will in the world, you can’t interpret the election result as a spectacular victory for less spending. Indeed, if nothing else, the unfortunate events of November 6 should have performed the useful task of disabusing us poor conservatives that America is any kind of “center-right nation.” A few months ago, I dined with a (pardon my English) French intellectual who, apropos Mitt Romney’s stump-speech warnings that we were on a one-way ticket to Continental-sized dependency, chortled to me, “Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it.”

My Gallic charmer is on to something. According to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics: government expenditures per person in France, $18,866.00; in the United States, $19,266.00. That’s adjusted for purchasing-power parity, and yes, no comparison is perfect, but did you ever think the difference between America and the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would come down to quibbling over the fine print? In that sense, the federal debt might be better understood as an American Self-Delusion Index, measuring the ever widening gap between the national mythology (a republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens) and the reality (a 21st-century cradle-to-grave nanny state in which, as the Democrats’ convention boasted, “government is the only thing we do together”).

Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune: Government spending in Australia is 33.1 percent of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1 percent. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4 percent and revenues are 41 percent — a shortfall but in the ballpark. Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but revenues are 24 percent — the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major economy.

So all the agonizing over our annual trillion-plus deficits overlooks the obvious solution: Given that we’re spending like Norwegians, why don’t we just pay Norwegian tax rates?

No danger of that. If (in Milton Himmelfarb’s famous formulation) Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans, Americans are taxed like Puerto Ricans but vote like Scandinavians. We already have a more severely redistributive taxation system than Europe in which the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans pay 70 percent of income tax while the poorest 20 percent shoulder just three-fifths of one percent. By comparison, the Norwegian tax burden is relatively equitably distributed. Yet Obama now wishes “the rich” to pay their “fair share” — presumably 80 or 90 percent. After all, as Warren Buffett pointed out in the New York Times this week, the Forbes 400 richest Americans have a combined wealth of $1.7 trillion. That sounds a lot, and once upon a time it was. But today, if you confiscated every penny the Forbes 400 have, it would be enough to cover just over one year’s federal deficit. And after that you’re back to square one. It’s not that “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share,” it’s that America isn’t. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it’s not willing to pay for.

A couple of years back, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute calculated that, if Washington were to increase every single tax by 30 percent, it would be enough to balance the books — in 25 years. If you were to raise taxes by 50 percent, it would be enough to fund our entitlement liabilities — just our current ones, not our future liabilities, which would require further increases. This is the scale of course correction needed.

If you don’t want that, you need to cut spending — like Harry Reid’s been doing. “Now remember, we’ve already done more than a billion dollars’ worth of cuts,” he bragged the other day. “So we need to get some credit for that.”

Wow! A billion dollars’ worth of cuts! Washington borrows $188 million every hour. So, if Reid took over five hours to negotiate those “cuts,” it was a complete waste of time. So are most of the “plans.” Any “debt-reduction plan” that doesn’t address at least $1.3 trillion a year is, in fact, a debt-increase plan.

So given that the ruling party will not permit spending cuts, what should Republicans do? If I were John Boehner, I’d say: “Clearly there’s no mandate for small government in the election results. So, if you milquetoast pantywaist sad-sack excuses for the sorriest bunch of so-called Americans who ever lived want to vote for Swede-sized statism, it’s time to pony up.”

Okay, he might want to focus-group it first. But that fundamental dishonesty is the heart of the crisis. You cannot simultaneously enjoy American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has to go.

Bravo!

So you want everything and you want some else to pay for it because you want what you want when you want it because you deserve it?

Time for Mom and Dad to step up and say, so how are you going to pay for it dear?

I’ll take Mr. Smither’s money, he’s rich, he can afford it.

That’s nice dear, then what it’s not sustainable? And what about Mr. Jones wanting to take your money now because YOU have it?

And how does that solve the problem? You can’t have money for nothing?

Uhhh…. 🙂

 

Cliff Diving

Whenever conservatives bring up the s-word in political discourse, indignant liberals recoil at the term.  How dare you call us Socialists?  Fine.  Let’s make a deal.  We’ll abide by a self-imposed cease and desist order on the socialism label just as soon as you guys explain this to the rest of us (see the final line item):

Geithner suggested $1.6 trillion in tax increases, McConnell says, but showed “minimal or no interest” in spending cuts. When congressional leaders went to the White House three days after the election, Obama talked of possible curbs on the explosive growth of food stamps and Social Security disability payments. But since Geithner didn’t mention them, those reductions appear to be off the table now, McConnell says.

Obama is pushing to raise the tax rates on couples earning more than $250,000 and individuals earning more than $200,000. But those wouldn’t produce revenues anywhere near $1.6 trillion over a decade.

It’s a TRAP!

And Obama can promise anything he likes, but since he leads from behind and lets his minions do his dirty work they don’t have to follow through and it’s not his fault if they don’t. 🙂

And the media sure as hell won’t remember or care if he does. It is, after all, entirely the Republicans fault no matter what. 🙂

President Obama is insisting that any deal reached to avoid the fiscal cliff — a blend of across-the-board tax increases and massive federal spending cuts set to begin in January — should also include an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling, the amount the government can borrow to maintain its operations. The government is set to reach its current $16 trillion limit in a matter of months.

Spend NOW, talk about cuts later, much later, like 4 years from now when the debt is over $20 Trillion and that will be the Republicans fault (oh, and they raised taxes too!). The 2014-16 strategy is coming into place nicely.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who battled with Obama last year over raising the debt ceiling, said Republicans won’t agree to another hike without corresponding spending cuts at least equal to the increased borrowing authority. The White House called Boehner “deeply irresponsible” for insisting on deeper cuts in programs that will already be reduced by any deal on the fiscal cliff.

“Asking that a political price be paid in order for Congress to do its job to ensure that the United States of America pays its bills and does not default for the first time in its history is deeply irresponsible,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

Gee, I thought that price was tax increases and no real spending cuts? 🙂

But the strategy is working. The Ministry of Truth is out in force.

Neither side wants to be blamed for allowing tax increases and sweeping budget cuts to hit Americans still reeling from the recession in the New Year. A recent CNN poll shows 45 percent are ready to blame Republicans if a compromise isn’t reached; 34 percent would blame Obama.

ObamaCare Update: Food Tax Increase (and not on just over $200,000)

New Obamacare regulations targeting the fast food and grocery store market that require signs detailing calorie and nutritional information on every product will force pizza makers like Domino’s to post up to 34 million different signs in every store: One for every possible pizza order.

“It’s not like a Big Mac. Pizza is customizable, there are options to factor in,” said Jenny Fouracre-Petko, legislative director for Domino’s and a member of the trade group American Pizza Community. “There are 34 million pizza combinations. We’ve done the math.”

Ditto for the grocery stores, which are shifting to providing more fresh made and baked goods, said Erik Lieberman, counsel for the Food Marketing Institute. “Consider just one fresh-baked blueberry muffin. If one is sold, you need a nutrition sign or sticker. If a half dozen are sold, a different one is required. Same if you sell a dozen.”

Lieberman predicted that the new regulations being finalized by the Food and Drug Administration for chains with 20 stores or more will cost the grocery industry $1 billion. He said stores average 1,500 fresh made items each.

Fouracre-Petko said that just posting generic nutrition signs in Domino’s will cost $4,700 per location, senseless, she said, because virtually all Domino’s customers order by phone and get their food delivered, so most will never seen them. She said that 10 percent of pizza customers enter a Domino’s store. “Coughing up almost $5,000 for something like this will hurt,” she said.

Lieberman said that consumers will get stuck with the bill. “It’s one more cost consumers are going to have to pay for,” he said. (examiner)

But at least you’ll have Health Care and will have “fairness” in class envy and stuck it to the rich!!!… 😉

But how many will lose their jobs over it?

Elections have consequences! (and these were not unintended). 🙂

 

 

Give The People What They Want Chapter II

A Psalm of Obama
(To be sung by children, K-12, every morning of their seven-day school week.)*

The State is my shepherd,

I shall not want.

It makes me lie down in federally owned pastures.

It leads me beside quiet waters in banned fishing areas.

It restores my soul through its control.

It guides me in the path of dependency for its namesake.

Even though our nation plunges into the valley of the shadow of debt,

I will fear no evil,

For Barack will be with me.

The Affordable Care Act and food stamps,

They comfort me.

You prepare a table of Michelle Obama approved foods before me in the presence of my Conservative and Libertarian enemies.

You anoint my head with hemp oil;

My government regulated 16-ounce cup overflows.

Surely mediocrity and an entitlement mentality will follow me

All the days of my life,

And I will dwell in a low-rent HUD home forever and ever.

Amen.

*Special Note: For union workers teaching their subjects this psalm in government schools, it is to be regarded as a psalm of exquisite beauty. The main subject is the watchful care that the Government extends over its dependents and the consequent faux assurance that you must make them feel that the State will supply all their needs. The leading thought—the essential idea—is to get gullible Americans to fully believe that Big Government will provide for them and that they will never be left to want. Make certain the dumb bastards get that message, okay? (Doug Giles)

BRAVO! BRAVO BRAVO!

And speaking of entitlements…

Riding a wave of confidence after his re-election victory, President Obama is eager to collect scalps from the class war he appears to have won. Americans, Obama said in his postelection news conference earlier this month, “want to make sure that middle-class folks aren’t bearing the entire burden and sacrifice when it comes to some of these big challenges. They expect that folks at the top are doing their fair share as well.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoed this point in a fundraising pitch sent out on Monday: “Voters sent a clear message to Republicans in the election: we must stand up for the middle class and ensure the wealthy pay their fair share.”

Although Obama and his fellow Democrats repeatedly call on wealthier Americans to pay their “fair share,” they never specify what percentage of the nation’s tax burden the wealthy would have to bear. As matters stand, the top 1 percent of American households paid 39 percent of income taxes in 2009, according to the most recent data compiled by the Congressional Budget Office, and the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid 64 percent.

But income taxes, taken in isolation, do not tell the whole story, because lower-income Americans do pay payroll taxes. But even taking into account all forms of taxation, the top 1 percent still paid 22 percent of federal taxes while earning just 13.4 percent of household income. The top 5 percent paid 40 percent of all federal taxes, despite earning only 26 percent of all income. No matter how you slice the numbers, it’s hard to understand why anyone would think the wealthy aren’t already shouldering a burden commensurate with their blessings.

In the next few weeks, Obama will keep repeating this “fair share” language as part of his call to raise taxes on those earning more than $250,000 per year. He also wants to close additional loopholes and limit deductions to increase their tax burden further. But bear this in mind: On top of whatever new taxes go into effect in the deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, there will be additional new taxes due to Obama’s national health care law. These include a 0.9 percent Medicare tax hike for individuals earning more than $200,000 per year and couples earning more than $250,000 as well as a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income.

Moreover, even if Obama gets his way on all of his tax hikes on the wealthy, it still won’t make a dent in the $16.3 trillion national debt. Later in his term, once he has blown all of the new revenue with spending increases and goes back to this well for still more revenues, will the media let Obama get away with claiming the wealthy aren’t paying their “fair share” once again, without specifying what constitutes fairness? (WE)

Unequivocally, Yes, they will. They are drinking from the same poisoned well.

They are The Ministry of Truth. They cannot commit heresy upon their God.

For they are with God, The Almighty, and none shall pass unless they are of The Body (yes, that’s a Star Trek Reference) and you will be Assimilated (another one) or you will be EXTERMINATED! (Doctor Who) Figurative, for now.

It’s what they voted for, after all.

Big Brother is Watching You. 🙂

 

Second Term

The number of American workers collecting federal disability insurance benefits hit yet another record high in October, according to the

Social Security Administration. This month 8.8 million disabled workers are collecting benefits, up from the previous record of 8.7 million set in September.

In February 2009, the first full month after President Barack Obama took office, there were 7.4 million workers collecting federal disability insurance. Thus, so far in Obama’s term, the number of workers collecting disability has increased by 1.3 million. That works out to a net increase of about 30K per month, or an average increase of about 975 per day (KFYI)

Obama: “I don’t want your vote just because of what I have done; I want your vote because of what I’m going to do.”

But what he’s going to do is a horror show of unbelievable socialism. So ignore what I HAVE Done. Just HOPE I do better next time (though when I don’t it will STILL be Bush’s fault and/or The Republicans)

Have Faith. Ignore the Facts.

“Proof Denies Faith, and without faith I am nothing” — Douglas Adams.

Obama in Florida: “When you elect a president, you’re counting on somebody you can trust to fight for you, who you can trust to do what they say they’re going to do, who can trust — that you can trust to make sure that when something unexpected happens, he or she is going to be thinking about your families, your future. Trust matters. And, Florida, you know me. You know I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”

It was the Film’s Fault! 🙂

It was George Bush’s Fault!

It’s was Corporate America’s Fault!

It’s Rich people’s Fault!

We are do better in the Middle East than ever before… 🙂

Anyone wondering why President Obama waited to reveal his second-term agenda should read his “plan.” It’s nothing but a stage prop full of recycled policies, failed ideas and stuff he ignored in his first term.

Even crediting Obama with putting forth a new plan is being too generous. All he really did was scrape together the handful of proposals he’d put up on his campaign website and add some nice photos and pretty graphics.

But since he’s waving around his 20-page, seven-point (two more than Romney’s!) plan at every campaign stop and acting like it’s a credible strategy to create jobs, we feel it deserves a careful reading. Here’s what we found.

• No credible tax reform plans. Obama says he’ll create a million manufacturing jobs in four years, first by reforming the corporate tax code.

We’re all for cutting the corporate tax rate and simplifying the code, but Obama had the chance to make this happen in his first term, after his own Economic Recovery Advisory Board urged such reforms back in August 2010.

Instead, he waited until February 2012 to put out a sketchy tax reform “framework.” And even that ignored many of the board’s recommendations.

Obama also says he’ll eliminate “tax deductions for companies shipping jobs overseas and use the savings to create new a tax credit for companies that bring jobs home.”

This is precisely what Sen. John Kerry proposed when he ran for president in 2004. In fact, Kerry’s economic adviser, Gene Sperling — who now heads Obama’s National Economic Council — used the same language back then, saying Kerry was committed to “eliminating tax incentives to move jobs overseas and using those funds to create incentives for new jobs and investment in the United States.”

The problem is that whenever anyone looks into this, they come to the same conclusion: There’s nothing there. A FactCheck.org report on Kerry’s plan in 2004 said off-shoring was “a minor problem that Kerry’s plan wouldn’t do much to fix.”

This year the same group pointed out that “there is no specific tax break for the sole purpose of relocating a U.S. job to another country.”

• Nothing for small businesses. Obama proposes cutting taxes on small business who hire new workers or increase wages. But this idea has already been tried and repeatedly found wanting.

A 2010 Congressional Research Service report concluded that these kinds of tax breaks haven’t been “as effective in increasing employment as desired.”

Obama also says he will expand the small business health insurance tax break included in ObamaCare. The problem is, this temporary credit has already been a massive failure, attracting just 170,000 small firms where Obama had predicted up to 4 million.

• Bogus deficit cuts. Obama says he has a “balanced” plan to cut the projected 10-year deficit by $4 trillion, using $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes.

But Obama’s own budget, released in February 2012, proves his plan would do nothing of the sort.

That document shows Obama would shave just $2 trillion off the projected $8.7 trillion in deficits, and would do so almost entirely through tax hikes, with $20 in new revenue for every $1 in spending cuts.

• More failed energy policies. Obama’s new energy plan is little changed from his old one — more “clean energy,” more investment in “high-tech” batteries, more money spent on wind and solar, onerous fuel economy rules for cars, and a mandate that a certain percentage of electric power come from renewable energy.

But those policies resulted in tens of billions of tax dollars wasted on failed companies and higher energy prices. The only thing new in Obama’s energy proposals is that he’s now hiding his massively expensive commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

• Phony education reforms. Four years ago, Obama promised to make college tuition more affordable and community college “completely free.”

But even with all the federal grant money and tax breaks Obama’s piled on, net college costs climbed 14% in the past four years, and community college costs are basically unchanged. Now Obama says he’ll cut college tuition growth rates in half, but hasn’t offered any realistic way to do so.

Obama’s other big idea is to hire 100,000 math and science teachers. But when Democrats tried to get this done last year, they couldn’t even get a bill to the floor of either the House or Senate.

• ObamaCare, seriously? The fact that Obama felt the need to include ObamaCare in his seven-point plan for the future shows just how bereft he is of new ideas.

• No entitlement reforms. And, finally, Obama’s Medicare and Social Security reform ideas can be summed up in three words: Just say no.

Obama promises only to block Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform idea and fight against any plan that would let today’s young workers invest Social Security taxes in private investment accounts. But he has no plans of his own to save either program from bankruptcy.

Obama might think that brandishing a shiny document and talking vaguely about “Moving America Forward” and “The New Economic Patriotism” will be enough to keep voters in his camp, just as “Hope and Change” did four years ago.

We suspect there are a lot of voters out there who don’t want to be fooled again. (IBD)

But I suspect there are plenty of them.

BENGHAZI

Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reveals details of meeting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the publically broadcast memorial service for the slain Americans at Andrews Air Force Base only days after the attack. And, in a recent radio appearance, Woods publicly questions who made the call not to send in back-up forces to possibly save his son’s life, as well as the three other Americans killed in Benghazi (which includes the American ambassador to Libya).

“When [Obama] came over to our little area” at Andrew Air Force Base, says Woods, “he kind of just mumbled, you know, ‘I’m sorry.’ His face was looking at me, but his eyes were looking over my shoulder like he could not look me in the eye. And it was not a sincere, ‘I’m really sorry, you know, that your son died,’ but it was totally insincere, more of whining type, ‘I’m sorry.’”

“I could tell that he was not sorry,” he added. “He had no remorse.”

Well, you are peasant and he has to do this because he’s required to but you are beneath him, you know.
This was just a political annoyance that had to be swept away.

Woods says that shaking President Obama’s hands at his son’s memorial service was “like shaking hands with a dead fish.”

“It just didn’t feel right,” he says of his encounter with the commander in chief. “And now that it’s coming out that apparently the White House situation room was watching our people die in real time, as this was happening,” Woods says, he wants answers on what happened—and why there was no apparent effort to save his son’s life.

“Well, this is what Hillary did,” Woods continues. “She came over and, you know, did the same thing—separately came over and talked with me. I gave her a hug, shook her hand. And she did not appear to be one bit sincere—at all. And you know, she mentioned that the thing about, we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video. That was the first time I had even heard about anything like that.”

“We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”-Hillary Clinton previously told him.

MORE LIES

Obama: “That organization [Planned Parenthood] provides millions of women with cervical cancer screenings, mammograms.”

No they don’t.

But who cares if he’s lying, certainly not him, his sycophants, or the Ministry of Truth.

“In many ways, because of the actions we took early on, we’re actually ahead of pace in the typical recovery out of a recession like this,” Obama said.

BULLCRAP!

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/studies/recession_perspective/

In the 12 quarters since the Obama recovery started, real GDP has climbed 6.7%. That’s below even the GDP growth rate in the 12 quarters after the 1980 recession ended — despite the fact that there was the intervening deep and prolonged 1981-82 recession.

The picture isn’t any better when looking at job growth.

Obama often boasts that the economy has added 5.2 million private-sector jobs in the 31 months since employment bottomed out in February 2010. But that rate of job growth lags every previous recovery as well if, as Obama does, you start counting at the point where jobs bottomed out.

Bush oversaw 5.3 million new private-sector jobs in the 31 months after employment hit bottom in mid-2003. Under Reagan, private-sector jobs climbed 8.2 million during a comparable time period.

What’s more, Obama’s recovery has reclaimed only about half the jobs lost during the recession. That’s a far cry from prior recoveries, which saw the number of jobs exceed the previous peak by this point.

In fact, had job growth under Obama kept pace with the previous worst recovery since World War II, there would be nearly 6 million more people with jobs today.

To be fair, the president uses a qualifier in his quote, comparing his recovery to others “out of a recession like this.”

In the past, Obama has argued that recoveries from a financial crisis like the one that caused 2007-09 recession are invariably slow and painful.

In June, for example, Obama said that “this was not your normal recession.”

He added that “throughout history, it has typically taken countries up to 10 years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude. Today, the economies of many European countries still aren’t growing. And their unemployment rate averages around 11%.”

Obama points to the work of economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who say that recoveries from financial crises tend to be protracted. Recently, the two wrotethat “if one compares U.S. output per capita and employment performance with those of other countries that suffered systemic financial crises in 2007-08, the U.S. performance is better than average.”

But the claim that financial crises always produce slow recoveries isn’t set in stone.

In fact, an October 2011 paper by the Atlanta Fed concluded that “U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 2007—2008.”

And a November 2011 paper by economists at Rutgers University and the Cleveland Fed concluded that while recessions tied to financial crises tend to be deeper than average, the recoveries also tend to be stronger than average.

Study co-author Michael Bardo noted that, based on these findings, “the slow recovery that we are experiencing from the recession that ended in July 2009 is an exception to the historical pattern.”(IBD)

The Sloth

Today is my 50th Birthday. So Happy Birthday to me, Mr President…

My New Bumper Sticker, Just for you! 🙂

Question: When Does anything not become Bush’s Fault?

Answer: When Romney Wins! Then it’s all HIS fault! 🙂

Addendum: If Obama wins, it’s all the “Congress’s” Fault (aka Republicans).

Oh Happy Days.

As I have gotten older and especially after my mom died 2 years ago mortality is much more on my mind.

Childhood heroes like Neil Armstrong start dropping like flies.

And even though I don’t have kids I wonder about the younger generations.

I am not consumed by “What’s in it for Me?!”

Hence, why I am a Tea Party Conservative. I want all this damn ridiculous overspending to stop because as Margret Thatcher once said (in paraphrase),”You eventually run out of other people’s money” and this game of borrowing money so you can spend it to kiss someone elses ass or  because you want to control everyone is just not going to work in the long run.

But these people aren’t thinking of the long run. Myopia is the watch word these days. 2 weeks from now when the election is over they will start running for 2014. And if Obama wins he’ll just be The King. 🙂

And “the people”, at least 47% of them will be looking for new handouts of “free” money or money taken from evil rich people who don’t need so why not give it to them. (because you don’t deserve it, perhaps?)

In my lifetime this country has gone from the self-reliant king of innovations to the sloth of an entitlement me-culture. And the most likely victims of this are much younger than I and have been raised by these people to be just like them.

But I still worry about them.

Unlike the Left. The supposed champions of these people. They just want to breed dependence and have done pretty awesome job of turning innovators into sloths.

Buy hey, sloths, vote for Democrats and that’s all that matters to them.

And as for the Republicans, well they too just want to be elected or re-elected and have bought the sloth and the sloth won. So they need to grow some balls.

And that’s the bottom line. Because, that’s what’s in it for them. 🙂

Oh, and by the way, that evil horse owning elitist witch who “never worked a day in her life” and has poor people to chew her food for her, Ann Romney is on Rachael Ray today, Check your Local Listings.

Now, I’m off to a Day long Marathon of Doctor Who!

 

Reality Bites

Had an interesting but short (because of time) conversation between me (right of center) another friend (somewhat left of center) and someone who is just left, not extreme left (but Obama bumper sticker left).

The one thing we could all agree on was that if we could replace EVERYONE in Congress we’d do it, in a heart beat.

Fascinating.

But that’s not the issue. And the Democrats are not running on the issue anyhow.

Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who is considered a possible contender for president in 2016, bucked other Obama surrogates on Sunday, saying that the country was not better off now than it was four years ago.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer asked: “Can you honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago?”

Responded O’Malley: “No, but that’s not the question of this election. The question, without a doubt, we are not as well off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses, the Bush recession, the Bush deficits, the series of desert wars — charged for the first time to credit cards, the national credit card.”

Quipped Schieffer: “George Bush is not on the ballots.”  (NJ)

But he  is for Democrats.

For Democrats it’s Bush/Ayn Rand Vs. The Greatest Most Caring, Most Compassionate, Greatest Dad,Killer of Bin Laden Bad ass, Black Man Ever! and…joe biden (small letters intentional).

They are the voice of reason against the insane on the right.

Perception is reality. And reality can be rewritten and overridden.

So the fact that they are insane is irrelevant.

Just as Democrats are gaveling in their convention Tuesday, the federal government likely will announce another dubious milestone — $16 trillion in total federal debt.

But don’t worry, that’s Bush’s Fault!!

David Axelrod a top adviser to Mr. Obama, said the president has a “plausible plan” to stabilize the debt, but acknowledged the plan doesn’t actually begin to reduce it.

“You can’t balance the budget in the short term because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy,” he said.

Antonio Villaraigosa, chairman of the Democratic National Convention says Obama has a plan to cut $4 trillion from the deficit. Obama plans to raise taxes on the wealthiest and cut them for the middle class, he said.

And that the Republicans plans are from “1812”.

Los Angeles has lost close to 140,000 jobs since the 2007 financial crisis. While other cities have rebounded, L.A.’s unemployment rate hovers well above 10% and is on the verge of bankruptcy.

But don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Though Villaraigosa has been mayor since 2005 and despite spending months on junkets outside of the city, he remains popular with his base coalition of Latinos and wealthy Westside liberals — two groups that deliver votes and seemingly never fall out of love with him.

Maybe that’s key to the high esteem in which he’s held by national Democrats. Like them, Villaraigosa shows little interest in governing — only in political power. And like them, he too is economically incompetent.

Gee, maybe his prominence shouldn’t be puzzling at all. He’s the perfect emblem for the Democrats. (IBD)

The Next Obama, a “clean, articulate black man” (as Biden once said of Obama) and another snake oil salesman for the class warfare age.

Axelrod for his part  called the Republican Convention a failure,“He spoke for 45 minutes and never really offered any real ideas for how to move the economy forward, how to lift the middle class. And in that sense, I think his convention was a terrible failure.”

But all he has is a “plausible plan” and 4 years of crap THAT didn’t work.

But  you aren’t supposed to notice that. You are supposed to focus on how “extreme” the Republicans are and fear what they going to do to you. What the Democrats are going to to is irrelevant.

Vote Democrats because the Republicans are extremist assholes.

Perception is reality. Reality can be overridden.

The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history and change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong.

And the other guys fault for everything. Even your own mistakes.

They (Republicans) are the extremist who want kick grandma off a cliff, steal candy from babies, hand out wire coat hangers to every woman and crush you so their “rich” friends can party hardy.

The fact that Democrats are MORE extreme is not to be noticed and if it is, squashed by even more extreme fear-mongering by The Ministry of Truth.

That’s reality.

Few people have the imagination for reality.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The growth of entitlement payments over the past half-century has been breathtaking. In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.

In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.

What happened to the days of limited government? Wasn’t the American government founded on the idea of governing the people, not stepping into their lives every day to provide them with handouts? Since when was the major job of the federal government to protect, manage and finance the entitlement empire?

Of course Medicare is not the only entitlement program, these statistics include Medicaid and Social Security, too. It seems with this development it is likely we will see this become a major point of discussion in the next two months of campaigning. Hopefully the debates will make it easy for both candidates to explain where they see the future of entitlement programs.

It seems that we need to make sure that this is not a trend that continues. With an exponentially growing debt, we can’t possibly continue this kind of spending. Never mind our founding fathers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not believe what these programs have become. This was never meant to be part of the federal government’s responsibility. (townhall)

But that’s reality. But doing anything about it is evil, mean,cruel, and heartless.That’s the Democrats created reality.

The reality of more Dependents (Baby boomers) and less producers (their kids and grandkids) is reality. But addressing the issue is throwing grandma off a cliff.

Fascinating how that works. And Fascinating who that reality benefits. 🙂

As Democrats convene in Charlotte this week, they likely will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is really the Bain Crime Family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their profits, evading taxes, and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts.

Bain’s private-equity investments have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s reelection.

Government-employee pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain Capital’s economic stewardship. New York–based Preqin uses public documents, news accounts, and Freedom of Information Act requests to track private-equity holdings. Since 2000, Preqin reports, the following funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain:

Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund ($2.2 million)
Indiana Public Retirement System ($39.3 million)
Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System ($177.1 million)
Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System ($19.5 million)
Maryland State Retirement and Pension System ($117.5 million)
Public Employees’ Retirement System of Nevada ($20.3 million)
State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio ($767.3 million)
Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System ($231.5 million)
Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island ($25.0 million)
San Diego County Employees Retirement Association ($23.5 million)
Teacher Retirement System of Texas ($122.5 million)
Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System ($15.0 million)

These pension funds aggregate the savings of millions of unionized teachers, social workers, public-health personnel, and first responders. Many of them would be startled to learn that their nest eggs, or even their current pensions, are incubated by the company that Romney launched and the financiers whom he hired.

Major universities have profited from Bain’s expertise. According to Infrastructure Investor, Bain Capital Ventures Fund I (launched in 2001) managed wealth for “endowments and foundations such as Columbia, Princeton, and Yale universities.” The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman noted on July 18 that Harvard “has also invested with Bain.” Thus, Michelle and Barack Obama’s undergraduate campuses (Princeton and Columbia, respectively) and the university where they earned their law degrees (Harvard) all have enjoyed Bain Capital’s financial prowess.

According to BuyOuts magazine and S&P Capital IQ, Bain’s other college clients have included Cornell, Emory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, and the University of Pittsburgh. Preqin reports that the following schools have placed at least $424.6 million with Bain Capital between 1998 and 2008:

Purdue University ($15.9 million)
University of California ($225.7 million)
University of Michigan ($130 million)
University of Virginia ($20 million)
University of Washington ($33 million)

Major center-left foundations and cultural establishments also have seen their prospects brighten thanks to Bain Capital. According to the aforementioned sources, such Bain clients have included the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ford Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, and the Oprah Winfrey Foundation.

Why on earth would government-union leaders, university presidents, and foundation chiefs let a company with Bain Capital’s reputation oversee their precious assets?

“The scrutiny generated by a heated election year matters less than the performance the portfolio generates to the fund,” California State Teachers’ Retirement System spokesman Ricardo Duran recently told the Boston Globe. CalSTRS has pumped some $1.25 billion into Bain. Since 1988, Duran says, private-equity companies such as Bain have outperformed every other asset class to which CalSTRS has allocated the cash of its 856,360 largely unionized members focused on investment performance for all of our commitments, including Bain,” Jodi O’Neill, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Public Retirement System, told Reuters. “Election rhetoric has neither a positive nor negative impact on our assessment of a fund’s performance.”

“These government-union pension funds call the shots,” says my friend Brett A. Shisler, a Manhattan financier and former private-equity executive. “They want Bain to do one thing: make money. They do not evaluate Bain on how many jobs they create or environmentally friendly products they launch. No, they just care about money. If Team Obama is concerned about ‘greed,’ they should not blame private equity. They should blame the pension funds. What they demand is a far cry from conscious capitalism.”

So, what really is Bain’s reputation? Is it a gang of corporate buccaneers who plundered their ill-gotten gains by outsourcing, euthanizing feeble portfolio companies, and giving cancer to the spouses of those whom they fired? If so, union bosses, government retirees, liberal foundations, and elite universities — including the Obamas’ — thrive on the wages of Bain’s economic Darwinism.

If, however, these institutions relish the yields that Bain Capital generates by supporting start-ups and rescuing distressed companies, 80 percent of which have prospered, then this money is honest — and Team Obama isn’t.(NRO)

So don’t do as I do, do as I say. And I say Reality is what we say it is. Not what it really is. And if you disagree, well, you’re just a dumb, racist, greedy white guy who cares what you think!

But…

Some bad news for the vehement anti-war set: they’ve lost the spending argument. A new chart reveals that in the last decade, spending on national security, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined paled in comparison to entitlement spending — 19% to 65%, respectively. Over to you, infographic:

“About 65 percent of federal expenditures over the last ten years have gone towards entitlements,”Paul Miller writes. “By comparison, about 15 percent has gone towards national defense, excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq has cost three percent, and only about one percent has gone towards the war in Afghanistan (including the cost of ongoing military operations and all reconstruction and stabilization assistance combined), according to my analysis of figures from OMB.”

In other words, Miller says, “Afghanistan is the second-cheapest major war in U.S. history as a percentage of GDP, according to the Congressional Research Service.”

And of course, it’s worth noting that war spending is about to decline, as our efforts abroad wind down, but entitlement spending will only grow as more people retire. For all President Obama’s talk of a cheaper, “leaner” military, that’s clearly not the area in need of a trimming.

But:

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Sunday indirectly confirmed recent remarks by the Ambassador to Israel that the U.S. is “ready from a military perspective’’ to stop Iran from making a nuclear weapon if international pressure fails.

“We have plans to be able to implement any contingency we have to in order to defend ourselves,’’ Panetta said on ABC’s This Week. Earlier, Panetta said, “The fundamental premise is that neither the United States or the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.’’

“This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons,” ISIS said in its analysis.

BUT:

Some astoundingly grim news on the “economic recovery” front: half of American households are receiving government funds to support themselves. No matter which way you slice it, this number isn’t good news for the Obama administration — they can spin the jobs numbers by ignoring the number of people who dropped out of the workforce, but this statistic is pretty straightforward.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

The increase in recent years is likely due in large part to the lingering effects of the recession. As of early 2011, 15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits. Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to more multi-generational households. But even without the effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.

The Census data show that 16% of the population lives in a household where at least one member receives Social Security and 15% receive or live with someone who gets Medicare. There is likely a lot of overlap, since Social Security and Medicare tend to go hand in hand, but those percentages also are likely to increase as the Baby Boom generation ages.

It seems that Newt Gingrich’s nickname for President Obama rings true: he really is the “food stamp president.” More people than ever are relying on the state to support their families, and that’s a major indictment on Obama’s first term.

Furthermore, this puts even more pressure on the economic aspect of the presidential election. There’s no way to cut the deficit until fewer people are on the government payroll — unless, of course, Congress imposes massive (and sure to be massively unpopular) tax hikes.

Really, if this is the direction we’re headed, how many people want to keep going “forward?” (townhall.com)

So do you think the people for austerity and spending cuts or to tax you more to give to them?

And what will Anti-War Anti-Military Bush-Iraq obsessed psychos do now?

Reality is a Bitch and causes partisan Divide and Conquer politics a real problem.

But also, it causes conservatives a real problem that a majority of  people will have the choice of voting to sacrifice themselves or you.

Those are the questions and they aren’t so easy.

 

 

Reality is a Bitch

 

The White House says Obama told Francois Hollande that he looks forward to working with him on a range of shared economic and security challenges.

Obama invited Hollande to visit the White House before this month’s G-8 summit at Camp David, Md. Hollande is also expected to attend the NATO summit in Chicago later this month.

Hollande campaigned on raising tax rates on the rich in France to 75% and blamed economic troubles on the defeated Sarkozy. Allahpundit summarized France’s incoming Socialist president’s policies:

Hollande intends to modify one of Sarkozy’s key reforms, over the retirement age, to allow some people to retire at 60 instead of 62. He also plans to increase spending in a range of sectors and wants to ease France off its dependence on nuclear energy. He favors legalizing euthanasia and gay marriage…

Like it or not, Hollande is going to play a major role on the world stage and in the European Union’s ongoing budget crisis. (townhall)

And it’s not going to be pretty. The “entitled” greedy have one for themselves.

And Obama now loves The French.

With Congress returning from a weeklong spring recess, the Senate plans to vote Tuesday on whether to start debating a Democratic plan to keep college loan interest rates for 7.4 million students from doubling on July 1. The $6 billion measure would be paid for by collecting more Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes from high-earning owners of some privately held corporations.

Republicans want a vote on their own bill, which like the Democrats’ would freeze today’s 3.4 percent interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans for one more year. It would be financed by eliminating a preventive health program established by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Each side scoffs that the other’s proposal is unacceptable, and neither is expected to garner the votes needed to prevail. Even so, everyone expects a bipartisan deal before July 1 because no one wants students’ interest rates to balloon before November’s presidential and congressional elections. (townhall)

From the Ministry of Truth: News outlets are reporting that President Obama is “officially” kicking off his campaign this weekend with events in Virginia and Ohio. For anyone who hasn’t been under a rock for the last six months, the only response could be: what?

All those “more fundraisers” held than any President since Nixon combined didn’t count so the Media can reset their counter and you aren’t supposed to refer to it unless you’re a partisan hack because they have officially called those not campaign stops and you can’t now and the Ministry of Truth will be sure to let you know it.

That’s right, all the events, all the fundraisers, all the rallies that POTUS has attended haven’t actually been part of his campaign. Or so we’re supposed to believe. We’ve seen rallies in favor of the Buffett rule, college-campus events touting student loan rate subsidies, and other pet projects that President Obama has attended in the last month or so – and the Administration wants us to believe that these weren’t all campaign events. (townhall)

According to the left, if Obama wins a second term, he doesn’t have to deal with Congress, the right rolling back his achievements and “it’s on.”

Not to mention, a second Obama term could mean as many as three new Supreme Court Justices.

Which then means a complete liberal authoritarian stranglehold on everyone and everything.

Can you imagine a Supreme Court with a 7-2 Liberal majority of Obama Mania types being “fair” or “constitutional”??

MSNBC on Thursday again featured Ron Reagan to trade on the legacy of his father, trashing  the Republican Party as a “haven for bigots.”

“The Perfect Family” declares: “Suburban supermom Eileen Cleary (Academy Award® nominee Kathleen Turner) is the ultimate Catholic.” And indeed, the trailer for the movie perfectly reflects Hollywood’s twisted conception of Catholicism. One quote from Turner’s character reflects the view that faithful Catholics are heartless drones: “Well who cares if you’re happy? You’re living in sin!” Another quote is even more explicitly anti-Catholic: “I don’t have to think! I’m a Catholic!”

So you are a mindless racist or a Catholic if you aren’t for Obama.

And a misogynist  too. (“The war on women”).

And you want to coddle “rich” people.

And what are the Republicans doing about it?

Very little. 😦

“Up on Capitol Hill right now they (Republicans) seem to have exactly the opposite view,” said Obama in a speech before the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department in Washington, D.C.  “They voted to cut spending on transportation infrastructure by almost 30 percent. That means instead of putting more construction workers back on the job, they want to lay more off.”

“Instead of breaking ground on new projects, they want to let existing projects grind to a halt,” he said. “Instead of making the investments we need to get ahead, they’re willing to let us all fall further behind.”

Obama went on to say that the GOP wants to maintain tax cuts for the wealthy instead of spend more on infrastructure.

“Republicans in Congress would rather put fewer of you to work building fewer things than ask millionaires and billionaires to live without massive new tax cuts,” the president said.

“They’ve also set their sights on dismantling unions like yours,” he said. “After all you’ve done to build and protect the middle class, they make the argument you’re responsible for the problems facing the middle class.  Somehow that makes sense to them.”(MRC)

It’s not like the Unions aren’t already in the tank for him to begin with. So this had a different target. 🙂

AG Holder:“We’ve taken decisive action to vigorously enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act, our nation’s most important civil rights statute, by challenging attempts to disenfranchise many of our fellow citizens.” Holder has criticized voter ID laws as discriminatory, and  the Justice Department is challenging such laws in Texas and South Carolina.

“Across the administration, we’re working in a range of other innovative ways to achieve fairness and expand opportunity – from successfully advocating for the reduction of the unfair and unjust 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses – to launching a new, Department-wide Diversity Management Initiative ,” Holder said.

He urged the NAACP — which he counts as a partner to the Justice Department — to “take up the unfinished struggle for equal opportunity and justice.”

“The creation of that better America is within our grasp,” Holder said.

That’s why I’m facing Contempt of Congress. 🙂

But don’t worry, I will be a martyr to the Liberal Cause.

Then Liberals can’t even deal with “real” people.

Mark Steyn: Have you dated a composite woman? They’re America’s hottest new demographic. As with all the really cool stuff, Barack Obama was doing it years before the rest of us. In “Dreams From My Father”, the world’s all-time most unread best-seller, he spills the inside dope on his composite white girlfriend:

“When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.”

But being yourself is never going to be enough in the new composite America.

Last week, in an election campaign ad, Barack revealed his latest composite girlfriend — “Julia.”

She’s worse than the old New York girlfriend. She can’t even be herself. In fact, she can’t be anything without massive assistance from Barack every step of the way, from his “Head Start” program at the age of 3 through to his Social Security benefits at the age of 67.

Everything good in her life she owes to him.

When she writes her memoir, it will be thanks to a subvention from the Federal Publishing Assistance Program for Chronically Dependent Women, but you’ll love it: Sweet Dreams From My Sugar Daddy. She’s what the lawyers would call “non composite mentis.” She’s not competent to do a single thing for herself — and, from Barack’s point of view, that’s exactly what he’s looking for in a woman, if only for a one-night stand on a Tuesday in early November.

Then there’s “Elizabeth,” a 62-year-old Democrat Senate candidate from Massachusetts.

Like Barack’s white girlfriend, she couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be a composite — a white woman and an Indian woman, all mixed up in one!

Not Indian in the sense of Ashton Kutcher putting on brownface makeup and a fake-Indian accent in his amusing new commercial for the hip lo-fat snack Popchips.

But Indian in the sense of checking the “Are you Native American?” box on the Association of American Law Schools form, which Elizabeth Warren did for much of her adult life.

According to her, she’s part Cherokee and part Delaware. Not in the Joe Biden sense, I hasten to add, but Delaware in the sense of the Indian tribe named in honor of the home state of Big F—kin’ Chief Dances With Plugs.

How does she know she’s a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather’s “high cheekbones” and says the Indian stuff is part of her family “lore.”

Composites of what you want and hope for is much better than dealing with the reality of what you have. Sounds very liberal.

And France just vote for it. And if we vote for it November, we are Greece’d for sure and will never ever be able to recapture the American Dream – It will be stone dead.

But don’t worry, “We are from the Government and we are here to help you”. 🙂

Forward II

Michelle Obama: “The Vision That We Have For This Country Is The Right Vision”

“That is why we are so grateful to you all. That is why we did this again and we did it before and we will do it again because of all of you working so hard. Having this kind of energy, having this kind of focus,” First Lady Michelle Obama said to a group of Colorado Organizing For America volunteers Monday April 30, 2012 at Hillside Community Center in Colorado Springs.

“So, I just want to ask you one final question: Are you all in? I need to know! Are you all in?” Obama asked.

We are all in IT, for sure. That’s why we don’t need 4 more years of it!

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: “Fourth, we’re pursuing a negotiated peace. In coordination with the Afghan government, my administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban. We’ve made it clear that they can be a part of this future if they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence and abide by Afghan laws. Many members of the Taliban — from foot soldiers to leaders — have indicated an interest in reconciliation. The path to peace is now set before them. Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan security forces, backed by the United States and our allies.”

You’re an idiot. So you are going to negotiate a “peace” with the psycho muslims who crushed the country and attacked us and call that a victory? What a twit.

If they will just behave, we can work with them.And this hasty retreat is victory!

<barf bag overload>

ON OBL: Actual quote from Andrea Mitchell: “What do you think of the Republican criticism that we are politicizing it — that the White House, I should say, is politicizing it?”

Paging Dr. Freud! 🙂

***********

Thomas Sowell: Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do.

Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, “When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off.”

That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.

First there was the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting — a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.

Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a labor union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.

As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining labor unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.

Now that the Obama administration has appointed a majority of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB leadership has imposed new requirements that employers supply union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.

In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union. Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.

Workers who do not want to join a union will now have to decide how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going to have to put up with, if they don’t knuckle under.

In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest to vote against joining.

When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, with large financial support from labor unions, the rules were in fact changed by Obama’s NLRB.

As if to make the outcome of workers’ “choices” more of a foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an election and the election itself has been shortened by the NLRB.

In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount of time it takes, for them to prepare and implement an organizing campaign beforehand — and then suddenly announce a deadline date for the decision on having or not having a union. The union organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers have time to organize a comparable counter-argument or the workers have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured.

The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a captive group of union members, whose compulsory dues provide a large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses, to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose where to make campaign contributions from the union members’ dues.

Union elections do not recur like other elections. They are like some Third World elections: “One man, one vote — one time.” And getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle.

But, so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and corrupt process can continue.

A small headline in the 2nd section of the Wall Street Journal last week told a bigger story than a lot of front page banner headlines. It said, “U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas.”

Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free class warfare. Some people may be inspired by President Obama’s talk about making “the rich” pay their undefined “fair share” of taxes, or taking away corporations’ “tax breaks.” But talk is not always cheap. It can be very costly to those working people who are looking for jobs that the Obama administration’s anti-business policies are driving overseas.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas.” All these companies have at least 50,000 employees, so we are talking about a lot of jobs for foreigners with American companies overseas.

If the Wall Street Journal can figure this out, it seems certain that the President of the United States has economic advisers who can figure out the same thing. But that does not mean that the president is interested in the same thing.

In this, as in so much else, Barack Obama is interested in Barack Obama. Whatever bad effects his policies may have for others, those policies have had a track record of political success for many politicians in many places.

To put it bluntly, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, provided the goose doesn’t die before the next election. In this case, the goose simply lays its golden eggs somewhere else, so there is no political danger to President Obama.

Unemployment may remain a problem to many Americans, but that only provides another occasion for the Obama administration to show its “compassion” with extended unemployment benefits, more food stamps and various interventions to save home buyers from mortgage foreclosure. This can easily be a winning political strategy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt won his biggest landslide victory after his first term in office, during which the unemployment rate was never less than twice what it has been under Barack Obama.

The “smart money” inside the Beltway says that a high unemployment rate spells doom at the polls for a president. But history says that people who are getting government handouts tend to vote for whoever is doing the handing out.

The Obama administration has turned this into a handout state that breaks all previous records. Lofty rhetoric about “stimulus,” “shovel-ready projects,” “green jobs” or “investment” in “the industries of the future” all give political cover to what is plain old handouts to people who are likely to vote to re-elect Obama.

At the local level as well, history shows that some of the most successful politicians have been people who ruined the local economy and chased job-creating businesses away. Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s was not worried when affluent whites began moving out of the city in response to his policies, because they were people who were likely to vote against him if they stayed.

Of course they took their taxes, their investment money and the jobs they created with them. But that was Detroit’s problem, not Coleman Young’s problem. Barack Obama may win re-election by turning the United States into Detroit writ large.

Something similar happened in earlier times, when James Michael Curley served 4 terms as mayor of Boston, and 2 terms in prison. As the non-Irish left the city, in response to Curley’s policies, that increased Curley’s likelihood of being re-elected.

This kind of cynical politics is even more likely to succeed when political opponents fail to articulate their case to the public. And Republicans are notorious for neglecting articulation.

The phrase “tax cuts for the rich” has been repeated endlessly by Democrats without one Republican that I know of saying, “Folks, I don’t lie awake at night worrying about millionaires’ tax problems. Millionaires have lawyers and accountants who get paid to do that. But I do worry about jobs being lost to millions of American workers because we make the business climate here worse than in other countries. That’s a high price to pay for rhetoric.”

The case can be made. But somebody has to make the case.

Are you listening Mitt?