Archive for category Politics
Pawlenty Announces
Kyle Meintzer alerted me to this gutsy hat’s in the ring announcement. “Whoa, baby!
“Tim Pawlenty first announced his candidacy on this video, then later today called for an end to ethanol subsidies. He did that in IOWA! Tomorrow he’s going to Florida and call for changes in Medicare and for raising the Social Security retirement age.”
The ethanol tack slaps Gingrich directly in the face, as Newt sucks money from our ethanol tax dollars!
Hey, the truth may in fact work!
Is the Leftist Media Disenchanted with Obama?
Posted by Tom in Politics, Presidency, Press on April 30, 2011
This from the left coast’s San Francisco Chronicle: “White House Credibility Gap on Press Coverage.” WOW, Obama’s own media, in Pelosi’s home town, calling foul? What’s the story?
Seems that a Chronicle reporter took a video of the anointed one with her cell phone during a political fundraising event. Evidently that’s forbidden. So obviously, she must pay the price. Fair enough, rules are rules, she violated them, she gets canned from further coverage of the President.
“The White House communications operation has a credibility problem. On Thursday, key people in that office told The Chronicle in plain language that reporter Carla Marinucci would be banished as a pool reporter for future presidential visits because she shot video of a protest inside an Obama fund-raising event in San Francisco. The White House further threatened “retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban,” said Editor Ward Bushee. On Friday, the White House flat-out denied that such exchanges took place.”
Well, you just don’t push the Fourth Estate around that easily. After Josh Earnest told Politico.com that threat was not true, Bushee said in effect, liar liar pants on fire! So, in this “he said, she said” spat between adored and adorer, who’s right?
Or, does that really matter? Where would the Chronicle go if not to the anointed one? The answer is simple, they have no place to go, no one to turn to. They and their comrades put him in and now he’s theirs!
The post concludes with: “In fact, the exclusion of electronic journalists itself represents an overbearing attempt by the Obama White House to control what the public sees and hears of presidential visits. The ability to cover the president with 21st century reporting tools should not be subject to White House whims.”
Seems the Chronicle and its MSM fellow travelers should have asked about Obama whims long ago.
Random and Depressing Thoughts
President Obama is crafting and executive order requiring government contractors to disclose campaign contributions. Don’t worry about freedom of speech, there is none! This is Chicago politics, much like Tammany Hall, Curly’s Boston Machine and Tom Pendergast’s Kansas City. You donate against us, we audit, then we take away your contract! Power corrupts and these guys are powerful!
Obama’s stacked NLRB recently held Boeing violated its union contract by assembling the new 787 in South Carolina, a right to work state. It’s clear from the facts that this violates no contractual provision in the union contract thus the decision is wrong. But our President is beholden to the unions thus the law really doesn’t matter. Right to work is the anthesis of union states. Stay tuned.
Talk about union states, the Massachusetts House just passed a bill in the dead of night limiting public employee unions collective bargaining rights on certain health care provisions. Oh, and the House is controlled by Democrats. Seems that even they are waking up to the strangle hold public employee unions have on government. We can no longer afford this nonsense.
Ya gotta love it, gasoline hits $4 and Obama wants to investigate the oil companies and take away their tax breaks, you know the intangible drilling deductions that promote the discovery of oil. Where did our President learn economics? Does he think that if he increases oil companies’ costs that prices will go down or up? Absolutely brilliant.
Speaking of gas prices, or any prices for that matter, today’s WSJ had an interesting chart in its article on the dollar’s slide.
The dynamic duo, Bernanke and Geithner, really know how to hurt the folks living on fixed incomes. The Fed has the luxury of controlling the world’s only reserve currency so it can flood the world with increasingly declining dollars. Obama’s Treasury pushes more spending, deficits and debt arguing for an increase in the debt ceiling. Will they not understand that we are stealing from future generations?
MSM journalist Ted Koppel, an Obama supporter, penned a stinging op-ed in today’s WSJ on Obama’s foreign policy suggesting that in the past few months it “has been sufficiently erratic to make America’s allies reconsider the degree to which we can be trusted–and our adversaries re-evaluate the degree to which we must be feared.” Ted should look back farther than the last few months to see that this president is weak and wants to weaken America. I’ve oft maintained that if we were to endure a Pearl Harbor like attack, Obama would refer the matter to the UN, NATO, or whatever. He’s not a leader. Hamlet in the White House just doesn’t work!
SHUT IT DOWN!
Posted by Tom in Bankruptcy, Budgets, Congress, Deficit, Entitlements, National Character, Politics, Presidency, Statism on April 3, 2011
I’ve read several articles and posts on the potential shutdown of the government if a wasteful expense cuts are not agreed to by Reid and Obama. The consensus is, as in past shutdowns, that “essential services” would be maintained. (More on that later.) In essence, defense, boarder protections (such as we have), law enforcement, the courts, congress and the administration would continue as would things like welfare checks and social security, medicare and medicaid payments. Our world, our lives, will not end if the government shuts down!
USA Today reports that President Obama has predicted “dire” consequences if there is a shutdown. However, he has instructed agencies not to reveal their shutdown plans. Seems kinda strange, doesn’t? If consequences are so dire, why wouldn’t he let the agencies explain?
“In e-mails from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last month, agencies were told their statements to Congress “should not state or imply what functions would or would not be continued in the event of a funding gap.”
It continued: “Agencies should not be previewing shutdown plans — that is, policy and operational decisions — in any way.” Agencies were instructed to clear any responses to questions about their shutdown plans with OMB.”
Here’s the point: why is the United States government rendering NON-ESSENTIAL SERVICES, AND WITH OUR TAX MONEY?
By the blood of our forefathers we are a Constitutional Republic, one of limited powers, those not granted by us are reserved to the states or retained by us; this is embodied in the 10th Amendment. The government should perform ONLY essential services.
So, I say, shut it down. And consider shutting it down permanently. The boogyman Obama and his lackeys in the main stream media would have us fear is our own ignorance and dependency. This doesn’t portend a very confident future for our children!
In Serious Need of a Scapegoat
As Charles Hurt points out in his Washington Times opinion piece, Tea Party Not the Cause of the Budget Stalemate, Harry Reid is desperate for excuses. He and his PR mouth piece Chuck Schumer are sounding off on the Tea Party. Talk about desperate!
Hurt points out that since Obama took office the Democrats have been AWOL on budgeting:
“Over the past year and a half, the vast majority of which Democrats held total control over Congress, Democrats failed to produce a single spending bill or even a simple budget.
“When Democrats in the House managed to get a spending proposal through the lower chamber, those bills only went on to the Senate to die under Mr. Reid’s failed leadership.
“Not a single spending bill actually made it to the desk of the president, who would have gladly signed whatever his party sent him.”
He recounts the historic Republican landslide in November changing control of the House and weakening control in the Senate.
So, they haven’t passed a budget, but their failure to cut fat has made Obama famous for deficits and debt! Obama’s deficits in this and last year have been in the $1.5 Trillion range. We borrow 42 cents of every dollar these spendthrifts waste. Since taking office Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their fellow statists have increased the national debt by $3.445 Trillion, that’s $5 Billion a day! The pain will get worse as interest rates inevitably increase.
The worst part is they are stealing our children’s', grandchildren’s', and great-grandchildren’s’ money, indeed stealing their future! This sick excuse for a leader in the Senate is desperate. He’s so beholden to the unions, trial lawyers, Hollywood libs, and hands-out dole takers, that he’s frozen.
Harry, you are one poor excuse looking for another poor excuse. Get a spine, man and quit stealing from my grandchildren!
Obstruction of Government
Posted by Tom in Budgets, Employment, Politics, State Finances, Unions on March 25, 2011
Stephen Hayes and john McCormack chronicle the Democrats obstruction of government in their Weekly Standard article, On Wisconsin! They detail the fight, the several attempts at compromise, the bifurcation of the public employee bill, into a budgetary section and non-budgetary section, the independent legislative counsel’s blessing on that bifurcation and the ultimate passage of the bill restricting collective bargaining.
The fact that screams for attention is that the November election put the Republicans in control of both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion. The Republicans ran on platforms that the Democrats and public unions were bankrupting the state. The voters understood the danger of the unholy alliance between Democratic politicians and public union leaders: taxpayer money from the public trough went thru the union employee paychecks to the union bosses then back to elect the Democrat politicians. Incest at its best. No checks, no balances, no taxpayer input, unfettered theft! Well, the taxpayers did get their input at the ballot box in November and input they did.
In an historically Democratic state, a birthplace of so called “progressivism,” the voters kicked out the majority Democrats and installed a Republican government. But all the elected, Democrat and Republican, took an oath of office to uphold the constitution under which they were elected and sworn into office. At times it may be ugly but in the state democracies joined together in this republic under our constitution, the majority, fairly elected, is the government. Period!
It is obvious that those sacred oaths were only so many words to the defaulting Democrats. They were meaningless when put to the test. The elected minority, rather than honor their duties, deserted their offices, left the state, took a powder, went on the lamb. Dereliction of duty? Yes. Obstruction of government? Surely!
So after several attempts to cajole the recalcitrant Democrats to return, the legislature passed the ordinance freeing the state taxpayers, the voters from the most heinous aspects of the public employee union lock on the state treasury. The national brouhaha sponsored by President Obama and the national unions were only so much puff. The voters in Wisconsin and elsewhere realize that public unions have no place in a democracy, no competitive checks and balances to keep them and their political bosses honest. They have stolen way too much so far and amassed way too many unfunded liabilities yet to come.
The taxpayers are hurting and its time to stop this incestuous alliance. On Wisconsin!
Soros-Obama-Offshore Oil-Eximbank: Connect the Dots
Posted by Tom in Corporate Welfare, Energy Facts & Policies, Foreign Trade, Politics on March 24, 2011
Victor Davis Hanson in his RCP post, Energy Fantasyland, asks if high priced energy and $4+ gasoline is good or bad. He immediately suggests that this would ordinarily be a stupid question except for the fact that President Obama has shut down or limited nearly all domestic oil expiration and production. The effect of course in the Gulf has been to see the exit of drilling rigs and jobs. But he argues that this is right in line with Obama’s desire to drive energy prices up: “Today’s soaring energy prices are exactly what candidate Obama once dreamed about: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Obama, like Chu, made that dream even more explicit in the case of coal “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
Now let’s shift to Richard Weltz’s American Thinker post, Anyone Want to Connect the Petro-Dots? quote:
- George Soros and his various money-distribution organizations such as MoveOn.org spend heavily on behalf of Obama’s run for the presidency.
- Soros invests over $800 million for a large stake in Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company.
- The U.S. arranges for the Ex-Im Bank to guarantee loans of $2 billion to Brazil for exploration of offshore oil finds. end quote.
Victor Davis Hanson highlights President Obama victory lap in Brazil: “Last week, President Obama went to Brazil and declared of that country’s new offshore finds: “With the new oil finds off Brazil, President (Dilma) Rousseff has said that Brazil wants to be a major supplier of new stable sources of energy, and I’ve told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which would be a win-win for both our countries.”
The administration has run record deficits, generated record unsustainable debt, and generated 9% unemployment in the process, so what does it do? Shuts down virtually all oil exploration and promoted bullet trains and the already failed Chevy Volt which runs on gas.
Who wins, the American workers? No. The American consumers? No. George Soros? Why yes! The value of George’s Petrobras investment has multiplied dramatically. The profits generated with the Brazilian offshore production will be tremendous. Oh, and those profits will be enhanced with the subsidized financing provided by Eximbank!
One more thing, who do you think Soros will support in the 2012 presidential race?
American Sense of Forgiveness
Posted by Tom in Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, Politics on March 12, 2011
In this wonderful time of competitive politics it’s good to reflect upon the audience, the citizenry, the electorate. Following the tsunamic 2010 election and looking forward to the potentially cataclysmic 2012 election, we see competition in basic ideas, like the proper functions of government, and competition in advocates, managers, people who will execute those ideas. The Democrats seem to have both the ideas and politicians set in stone. But the Republicans are where the firmament is bubbling, coming to a full boil.
Will the GOP traditional pols prevail or will the young turk tea partiers win out? RINO or REAL CONSERVATIVE, who will prevail. Important question, since our children’s and grandchildren’s future depend on the answer. So that’s what’s exciting and crucial.
So it’s time to focus upon the audience, the voter. My premise is that it’s in the American nature to forgive. This, a God given attribute indeed, is one the things that makes our country great. Forgiveness is not so much applied to principles or policy as it is advocates of those principles.
So, in the only competitive arena, can the voters forgive a politician who professes one thing yet has acted or continues to acts in a way contrary to that profession? Can they, for example, overlook a Mitt Romney being against Obamacare which is bankrupting our children, yet defending his advocacy of Romneycare which is bankrupting Massachusetts for succeeding generations to come. He continues to stand by his anti-freedom, uneconomic, and statistic legislation on the grounds of state rights! Is this so shallow that it evaporates?
Or can they forgive an otherwise brilliant Newt Gingrich who professes free markets and limited government free of special interests yet is funded by and continues to advocate the worst hoax ever perpetrated on the US taxpayers, consumers and environmentalists, ETHANO? That’s right Newt to curry favor and take money from the corporate farm lobby, continues to advocate ethanol subsidies, ethanol mandates, ethanol tax breaks, and ethanol trade restrictions all of which harm the environment?
Or can they forgive a Tim Pawlenty who supported cap-in-trade? This we all know will kill the US economy. How could he have supported it? The point is that that support is past. He no longer does. He says: “It’s fair to say I’ve had a change of position…the reason is it’s a dumb idea!”
Who will be forgiven? The pol who will not admit an egregious past mistake and tries to defend it? The pol who professes one philosophy yet lives by, takes money from and advocates an opposite philosophy? Or, the pol who says “I was wrong, my position was mistaken, a dumb idea?”
To get the voters forgiveness, you must admit that you were wrong. In short, you must ask for forgiveness. Once confessed, once forgiven. In my opinion, neither Romney nor Gingrich will be forgiven. But Pawlenty? JUST WATCH!
John Stewart on Gitmo Capitulation
Posted by Tom in Humor, Justice, Political Correctness, Politics on March 10, 2011
John Stewart: The Daily Show on liberals…..fair and balanced?
Rallying the Base……..sort of!
Posted by Tom in Entitlements, Humor, Politics, Welfare on March 9, 2011
