Political Angst In America

Name:
Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Here is a report that says snopes is good for checking validity of things like urban myths, but politically has a decidedly liberal bias. I think everyone who had read much on the site was aware of that:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/097/ripoff0097773.htm

Friday, February 27, 2009

At my granddaughter's school the coke machine was removed so the children wouldn't consume so much sugar. (There is a water bottle machine that they can waste their money on.) Cutting down sugar intake may help control the children's weight. Some think it also reduces hyperactivity. I have never believed the old wives tale that sugar makes children hyperactive based on my personal observation. Here is a report on some research that agrees with my opinion.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4142

Here is an assessment of how Obama blitzed the Republicans in the last election. It is also how he is going to bring fascism to America. It looks like he has all of the cards, so America is about to be a socialist nation with the inevitable decline certain to follow.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/how_he_did_it_a_diagrammatic_a.html

Having a few plug-ins for electric cars is a good idea. But what happens when all 3000 people at Lockheed Martin want to plug in?

http://gas2.org/2009/02/25/raleigh-nc-to-install-plug-in-hybrid-charging-stations/

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Obama says that he wants to make the US free from dependence on foreign oil. Based on his decision not to exploit any of the oil or other fossil fuel sources in the US he is deliberately deceptive in what he says. He really means that he wants to make the US stop using any type of fossil fuel derived from any source. The US has, perhaps, two trillion barrels of shale oil that could be exploited. But, Obama and the Democrats don't want to develop that any more than exploiting ANWR, off-shore, etc. I saw Canadian PM Harper interviewed on TV recently, and he was a refreshing contrast to the fascist Obama. (Sean Penn might note that Harper is also quite elegant.) Harper said Canada plans to go ahead with developing their resources. Here is an article about shale oil.

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2009/02/25/interior-decision-on-oil-shale-locks-away-american-energy-resource-larger-than-total-reserves-of-middle-east/

The Obama Administration is going to use all means possible to disarm the public. Here is another tack, namely to ban the import of ammunition in common calibers. (So, we'd better stock up while we can still afford the ammo):

http://virginiashootingsportsassociation.blogspot.com/2009/02/state-department-floating-ammo-import.html

Today I saw Bill Seidman on CNBC. His comment about the Obama stimulus plan (as I recall),"The government is spending money they don't have on problems that money won't fix." That sounds like a good summation of the financial situation.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress and the White House we can expect vigorous efforts to ban guns. A new idea that I have not heard before is to require gun owners to have a $1 million insurance policy. (No one writes such a policy now, but if the law were passed, I'm sure the insurance policies would be made available. But, they would undoubtedly be expensive for the gun owners.)

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/second-amendment-under-fire-gun-ownership-in-the-obama-era/

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Davis Cup match in Sweden will be played without spectators, as reported in the blog 'Powerline.'

The AP reports that spectators will be barred from the Sweden-Israel Davis Cup match next month in Malmo. There appears to be a vague concern about controlling Swedish youth in Malmo:

The Davis Cup matches between Sweden and Israel will be played without spectators in Malmo next month. Attempts to move the venue to Stockholm fell through.

Officials have cited security concerns for the World Group series, which will be played March 6-8. Several anti-Israeli demonstrations have been planned in Malmo.

Stockholm had offered to host the matches, saying it was better prepared to guarantee security arrangements. But that possibility ended when Stockholm officials said they couldn't get organized in time for Sunday's arrival of the Israeli team.

What's the problem in Malmo? Interested readers are left to fill in the blanks for themselves.


The reason for no spectators is that the Malmo youths are Arabic Muslims. When you get a lot of members of the 'Religion of Peace' in a community then everyone has to adjust to their custom, or violence will erupt. Recently I read that a lot of Swedish girls in Malmo were being raped by Muslims. The reason was the provocative clothing they wear. A female Swedish Minister said that the girls were going to have to realize that they now live in a multi-cultural environment now. So, I suppose that in Detroit soon, girls will have to start wearing Burka's or risk being raped.

Monday, February 23, 2009

I recall when Clinton built the "bridge to the 21st century." Now it appears that Obama wants to cross that bridge back into the 20th century, to those wondrous years when Jimmy Carter was President. When we cozied up to communist dictators, the Islamists thumbed their noses at us, the Russians viewed our military with contempt, and our economy was mired in stagflation. Now, Obama is taking us back to those glorious days of yesteryear.

Obama's Secretary of Energy says he doesn't know what the Administrations position is on oil production. In fact he doesn't seem to know much except that he is convinced that global warming is the biggest threat to mankind, and that he is eager to do away with oil, gas, and nuclear power. Pathetic.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123508025907226643.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Dcomments

I don't subscribe to often conspiracy theories. On area where there have been conspiracies is in financial crisis. George Soros has engineered a few of these, as is well known. I think that there are signs of conspiracy in the current financial meltdown. Of course it may be that several different groups with different agenda's took advantage of the situation. Senator Schumer started the ball rolling, and should have been prosecuted. So many bad things happened to Bush and the Republicans in the second half of 2008 that it is unlikely to have been a coincidence. (As Machiavelli said, when a lot of bad things start happening to you suddenly, it is not a coincidence, it is the action of your enemy. Democrats have demonstrated that they are willing to damage the country as a whole for domestic political advantage, so they certainly would have no moral objection to orchestrating what happened, whether they did it or not. Here are some thoughts on this from 'Flopping Aces;'

http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/02/23/a-contrived-crisis-you-decide-reader-post/#more-17307

I have been watching Obama speechify every day. I really miss Bush. He may not have been elegant, but he, until the Democrats and the Press undermined him, he faced problems head on. He was for democracy. Obama is a fascist who wants to establish a socialist totalitarian government in the US because he has the 'victim' mentality that says most people cannot care for themselves. The Anchoress has some good comments on this:

http://theanchoressonline.com/2009/02/23/yep-i-miss-bush/

Politicians say they had nothing to do with the financial meltdown. Nor did people taking out loans they couldn't afford. It was all about greedy bankers, and dumb old Bush. But, the politicians demanded that 56% of mortgage loans go to low income people. That force the bankers to make bad loans. Read more here:

http://www.bobkrumm.com/blog/?p=2121

Robert Sameulson doesn't think the stimulus bill will do much to stimulate the economy. That is the way it seems to me, but it is pretty hard to tell what is in a 1071 page bill. Block grants to states would have been a better idea; but then, someone besides the Washington Democrats would have decided where to spend the money.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/22/AR2009022202006.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

Al Gore, Carol Browner and the Obama Administration want to implement a carbon cap and trade system in the US. This is a great system for rewarding friends and punishing enemies. The carbon trading system in Europe hasn't worked well as far as reducing CO2 emission, but maybe it has worked out in terms of cronyism. Here is an article about the European situation.

A collapsing carbon market makes mega-pollution cheap

Europe's system to edge up the cost of emissions and boost green energy has backfired. There isn't much time to rescue it

Julian Glover The Guardian, Monday 23 February 2009 '

Roll up for the great pollution fire sale, the ultimate chance to wreck the climate on the cheap. You sir, over there, from the power company - look at this lovely tonne of freshly made, sulphur-rich carbon dioxide. Last summer it cost an eyewatering €31 to throw up your smokestack, but in our give-away global recession sale, that's been slashed to a crazy €8.20. Dump plans for the wind turbine! Compare our offer with costly solar energy! At this low, low price you can't afford not to burn coal!"

Set up to price pollution out of existence, carbon trading is pricing it back in. Europe's carbon markets are in collapse.

Yet the hiss of escaping gas is almost inaudible. There's no big news headline, nothing sensational for TV viewers to watch; no queues outside banks or missing Texan showmen. You can't see or hear a market for a pollutant tumble. But at stake is what was supposed to be a central lever in the world's effort to turn back climate change. Intended to price fossil fuels out of the market, the system is instead turning them into the rational economic choice.

That there exists something called carbon trading is about all that most people know. A few know, too, that Europe has created carbon exchanges, and traders who buy and sell. Few but the professionals, however, know that this market is now failing in its purpose: to edge up the cost of emitting CO2.

The theory sounded fine in the boom years, back when Nicholas Stern described climate change as "the biggest market failure in history" - a market failure to which carbon trading was meant to be a market solution. Instead, it's bolstering the business case for fossil fuels.

Understanding why is easy. A year ago European governments allocated a limited number of carbon emission permits to their big polluters. Businesses that reduce pollution are allowed to sell spare permits to ones that need more. As demand outstrips this capped supply, and the price of permits rises, an incentive grows to invest in green energy. Why buy costly permits to keep a coal plant running when you can put the cash into clean power instead?

All this only works as the carbon price lifts. As with 1924 Château Lafite or Damian Hirst's diamond skulls, scarcity and speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse. As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don't need and sell them on. The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters such as the steelmaker Corus: industrial assistance in camouflage.

"I don't know why industrials would miss this opportunity," said one trader last week. "They are using it to compensate for the tightening of credit and the slowdown, to pay for redundancies."

A lot of the blame lies with governments that signed up to carbon trading as a neat idea, but then indulged polluters with luxurious quantities of permits. The excuse was that growth would soon see them bumping against the ceiling.

Instead, exchanges are in meltdown: a tonne of carbon has dropped to about €8, down from last year's summer peak of €31 and far below the €30-€45 range at which renewables can compete with fossil fuels.

The lesson of the carbon slump, like the credit crunch, is that markets can be a conduit, but not a substitute, for political will. They only work when properly primed and regulated. Europe hoped that the mere creation of a carbon market would drive everyone away from fossil fuels. It forgot that demand had to outstrip supply, and that if growth stops, demand drops too.

There is not much time to rescue the system. Carbon trading remains at the heart of the international response to climate change. Obama backs what Americans call cap and trade. Australia wants to try the same thing. It should be at the heart of a deal at the Copenhagen summit this winter. But both are hesitating, given Europe's mess.

The market must be unashamedly rigged to force supply below demand. The obvious way would be to cut the number of permits in circulation, but in a recession no government will be brave enough to do that. And private initiatives such as Sandbag, which encourages individuals to buy and lock away permits, can exert little pressure on price in a market awash with them.

Europe can choke off tomorrow's supply, however, without hitting business today. First the EU must stop importing permits from countries such as Russia - a bonus for a paper transaction. No one really believes that 15m tonnes of imported permits will not still be emitted by a steelworks somewhere east of Novosibirsk.

Second, it must publish plans to crack down on the surplus of permits when the recession is over. Warnings of famine ahead, when the scheme enters its third stage in 2012, would raise prices now, if believed.

Like medieval pardoners handing out unlimited indulgences, governments have created a glut. Reformation must follow. Wanted - a modern Martin Luther to nail a shaming truth to industry's door: Europe's whizz-bang carbon market is turning sub-prime.

julian.glover@guardian.co.uk


I did some calculation using the numbers in this article and came up with a differential of $0.065/kW-hr between fossil fuel generated electricity and "green" generated electricity.

The government is always looking for new ways to tax people. The Obama Administration would also like to reduce the amount of number of miles people drive. So they are considering taxing people on the number of miles driven. One way to implement such a tax would be to put a GPS into every vehicle. Presumably they would put in a communication link that feed the mileage to the government taxing agency. Of course, they would also be able to determine the location of all vehicles at all times. Of course it would take a Court Order for them to access the system to locate a particular vehicle. Yeah, sure. Big Brother is watching you!

Does proposed 'mileage tax' have hidden agenda?
Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow - 2/23/2009 7:00:00 AM

A government-spending watchdog says a recently discussed plan for raising tax revenue for America's roads should scare anyone who drives a car.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently stated that he would be willing to implement a plan that will tax motorists on the amount of miles driven. Massachusetts lawmakers have considered such a plan, and pilot programs have been implemented in the Northwest United States.

In order to track the mileage, cars will have to be fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) units. This has prompted fear of a "big brother state," and some critics are calling it Orwellian intrusion. David Williams, vice-president of policy with Citizens Against Government Waste, has similar concerns.

"[I]t looks like this could be a camel's nose under the tent," Williams offers. "You know, this is the first step -- you put a GPS unit in every car to, quote, 'track mileage.' Well, what else is it going to track? And what else are they going to monitor?"

Yet it is consistent with what he sees government desiring these days. "...[I]t gets with the government's obsession with two things: knowing everything about us, and collecting money from us," he says.

But lawmakers have been talking about replacing the gas tax with the mileage tax. OneNewsNow asked Williams if that was a realistic goal.

"Well, if this were to be like the income tax or the tax system, they probably would not get rid of something -- they would just add onto another layer," he states. "Because every time they talk about reforming the tax system...no one really says to get rid of the current tax system. So [I suspect] we would see it as just another layer."

Williams says lawmakers are talking about other tax sources for roads because the current system has been poorly managed. For example, Williams says millions of dollars have been used to plant flowers instead of repair roads and bridges.

Thomas Sowell is not impressed by the Obama Administration's first few days in office. (Democrats would disagree with the comments about politicians micro-management of the home mortgage industry; they think they did a good job, but greedy bankers messed it up.)

"There is far more to fear from this administration than its amateurism in governing. The urgency with which it has rushed through a monumental spending bill, whose actual spending will not be completed even after 2010, ought to set off alarm bells among those who are not in thrall to the euphoria of Obama's presidency. The urgency was real, even if the reason given was phony. President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, let slip a valuable clue when he said that a crisis should not go to waste, that a crisis is an opportunity to do things that you could not do otherwise. Think about the utter cynicism of that. During a crisis, a panicked public will let you get away with things you couldn't get away with otherwise. A corollary of that is that you had better act quickly while the crisis is at hand, without Congressional hearings or public debates about what you are doing. Above all, you must act before the economy begins to recover on its own. The party line is that the market has failed so disastrously that only the government can save us. It is proclaimed in Washington and echoed in the media. The last thing the administration can risk is delay that could allow the market to begin recovering on its own. That would undermine, if not destroy, a golden opportunity to restructure the American economy in ways that would allow politicians to micro-manage other sectors of the economy the way they have micro-managed the housing market into disaster." --Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell

I just listened to Obama make another speech. He says Bush was an evil, incompetent, dishonest fraud. But, he is going to bring back good government. He is re-instituting paygo. (He didn't say if he is going to cut $800 billion from the budget to offset the stimulus bill he signed last week; but, since he is bringing back honesty, surel he is.) The market only fell a little bit as he spoke.

Under Bill Clinton the United States Federal Government used deadly police action against citizens with whom they disagreed. At Waco and Ruby Ridge they killed people with clearly criminal action. Then there was the case of Elian Gonzalez. If Bush had conducted such activities, Liberals would have gone berserk. But, since a Democrat was infringing on Constitutional rights, they applauded. Here is a comment by someone else who sees the situation as I do:

"Mark Alexander ended his essay, 'Obama vs. Reagan,' by saying, '...or another unpleasantry like that one begun in 1776, the discussion of which has now entered mainstream conversations, albeit at a whisper.' Let me be one of the first to speak above a whisper. The United States, as a federal republic, and our beloved Constitution are dead, and they cannot be easily restored under current conditions. In my humble opinion, I think the U.S. died when Clinton's thugs ripped Elian Gonzales from Liberty's arms at gunpoint and sent him back to a gulag, and the body has just been twitching ever since. With Obama and his Leftists now firmly in control, the body isn't even twitching anymore, and it's now being buried. 'That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...' When and where does the next Continental Congress meet? I'm there, and I'm serious." --Odenton, Maryland

I watched Obama make another speech on TV, this time at a conference of governors. As usual, as Obama spoke, the Dow fell. If he doesn't quit making speeches, the stock market is going to disappear. Maybe that is his plan; soon the government will be able to buy up all of the publically traded corporations in the US. Obama spoke to the governors as if he is King and they work for him. The Democrats would have gone berserk if Bush had made a similar speech. I wonder if many states will refuse the aid from the Federal Government? They should, because a stimulus plan is an overt attempt for the Feds to take over the States. Obama clearly wants to establish a European style socialist state, and is well on his way to accomplishing it.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

There is no doubt where Obama stands on the amnesty for illegal aliens issue. After all, there are 20 million of them here, and they want to bring in their extended families. And Obama and the Democrats want them to be citizens. With all of those new voters the Democrats can turn the US into a one-party nation.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_legalization_aliens/2009/02/22/184386.html?s=al&promo_code=7AC5-1

The Obama Administration plans to destroy the economy of the United States through the mechanism of having EPA declare that carbon dioxide is dangerous to the health of people. (A curious position since life cannot exist without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. How do they know what the proper concentration is?) Obama was forthright during the campaign that he would stop the construction of coal fired power plants. He doesn't much like nuclear power either. Natural gas fuel? Not much. He likes solar and wind power. Texas has a lot of wind power now. About 10% of installed power in the state is wind turbines. But they account for only 5% of power consumption. That sort of implies that it would take a lot of wind turbines to get to 50% of the power consumed, but most of the existing conventional power capacity would still be needed. This is because on hot August afternoons when the power requirement peaks the wind typically does not blow. So most of the current installed power capacity would still be required. Here is an article about the Obama Administration plans:

US Climate Czar: CO2 Regulation Ruling To Come Soon

By Dow Jones

President Barack Obama’s climate czar said Sunday the Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue a rule on the regulation of carbon dioxide, finding that it represents a danger to the public.

The White House is pressing Congress to draft and pass legislation that would cut greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, threatening to use authority under the Clean Air Act if legislators don’t move fast enough or create strong enough provisions.

Carol Browner, Obama’s special advisor on climate change and energy, also said the administration is seeking to establish a national standard for auto emissions that could mean tougher efficiency mandates for auto makers. The new standard could be fashioned after strict proposals developed in California that would limit greenhouse gas emissions - initiatives that car makers have vigorously fought.

The comments - the first by the administration on the topic - could lead to another blow for beleaguered car companies such as General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) that are already tottering.

“EPA’s going to look at Mass. Vs. EPA and will make an endangerment finding,” Browner told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. The Supreme Court ordered the EPA in the Mass. Vs. EPA case to determine if carbon dioxide endangered public health or welfare.

“The next step is a notice of proposed rulemaking” for new regulations on CO2 emissions, Browner said on the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting, one of her first public appearances since the inauguration.

Browner declined to say exactly when the EPA would issue the finding or rulemaking, but EPA chief Lisa Jackson has indicated it could be on April 2, the anniversary of Mass Vs. EPA. Obama EPA chief Lisa Jackson said earlier in the month that her office would soon begin drafting rules for regulating CO2. The agency has been intensely reviewing and updating an existing endangerment finding made last year by agency officials - but blocked by the previous administration - that found carbon dioxide threatened human welfare.

Officially recognizing that carbon dioxide is a danger to the public would trigger regulation of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, refineries, chemical plants, cement firms, vehicles and any other emitting sectors across the economy.

Industry fears it could shut down the economy, not only preventing plants from operating and spurring a dramatic retooling of the energy sector but also pushing up costs and hurting the international competitiveness for a raft of sectors. Environmentalists, meanwhile, say action by the administration is required by law and need to pressure lawmakers to act.

But Browner said the administration prefers that Congress draft legislation rather than CO2 to be regulated under the Clean Air Act because lawmakers could develop a bill that could more deftly regulate the greenhouse gas through a cap- and-trade system. Read more here. See this Canada Free Press story here discounting the CO2 role in climate change and importance to agriculture.


Satellite Data Show No Warming Before 1997. Changes Since Not Related to CO2

By Arno Arrak

A full analysis of satellite-measured lower tropospheric temperatures indicates that none of the global temperature variations from 1978 to 2008 can be attributed to the effect of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The record shows global climate oscillations with a period of three to five years and a peak-to-peak amplitude of 0.4 to 0.5 degrees Celsius about a common, fixed mean temperature that lasted from 1978 to 1997. Since this mean
temperature did not change for twenty years the late twentieth century warming touted by IPCC and others simply did not happen. The cause of these newly discovered climate oscillations is large-scale periodic movement of ocean waters from shore to shore, part of the El Nino – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system. It is accompanied by a massive, periodic transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere and back again which was previously
unsuspected and which is detectable even in land-based records. This major atmospheric phenomenon is missing from all IPCC Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and thereby invalidates conclusions drawn from their climate models. Satellite records show that this oscillatory period ended with a giant warming peak known as the “super El Nino of 1998.”

This unusual peak does not belong to the oscillatory ENSO system but interrupts it and could well be of cosmogenic origin. After it subsided the interrupted ENSO oscillation continued. But it had been energized from that warm peak and in three years the global temperature rose to a plateau 0.2 degrees above previous peaks. The expected climate downturn that should have followed failed to occur and temperature stayed up there for six years. It lasted from 2001 to 2007. This “twenty first century high,” together with the warming peak that preceded it, accounts for recent accelerated loss of arctic ice. Contrary to carbon dioxide theory the world temperature did not increase but stayed the same during this period. The period ended with a climate downturn in 2007.



Carbon dioxide cannot explain the lack of warming in the eighties and nineties, nor any of the abrupt warmings that followed, nor the stasis of the twenty first century high, nor the temperature downturn that followed it in 2007 and bottomed out in 2008. A direct comparison of these satellite data with ground-based measurements is also possible. Comparing satellite (UAH MSU LT) and land-based (HadCRUT3) data for the eighties and nineties gives HadCRUT3 a warming trend of 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade (one degree per century) while lower tropospheric satellite data show no warming at all. This is compounded by the fact that satellite measurements of midtropospheric temperature show a long-term cooling effect for this period. Looking for sources
of error in ground-based data one is led to the usual suspect, the urban heat island effect.

Fatal computer errors in IPCC climate models derive from the fact that none of the abrupt warmings and coolings on the record, especially since 1998, can be attributed to the greenhouse effect. Hence, all IPCC models purporting to predict (project??) climate a hundred years into the future are invalid and their predictions/projections must be discarded. To summarize: existing theory used by the IPCC can neither explain the observed climate nor predict the future. Carbon dioxide warming has been shown to be non-existent in the eighties and nineties, and the warming since 1998 is not carbonaceous in origin. It follows that Quijotic carbon dioxide policies like the Kyoto Protocol and the cap-and-trade laws should be abandoned.

I see Democrats on TV attack when their stimulus plan is questioned. They say very aggressively that it is hard to overcome eight years of the failed policies of George Bush. They never specify what those failed policies were beyond tax cuts. (Democrats really don't like tax cuts.) I can't figure out how the tax cuts caused the financial meltdown. The Democrats also blame bankers for the mortgage crisis rather than the people who took out loans they couldn't afford. They refuse to accept any responsibility for the government's policy of forcing financial institutions to make loans to people who were poor credit risks. From what I read, Europe is in worse shape financially than the US. My question for Democrats is, how did tax cuts in the US cause financial problems is socialistic Europe?

It seemed to me that Bush's policies were aimed at preventing a violent conflict between Islam and the West. The policies of Obama seem to me to make the conflict more likely. Here is an opinion of a Middle East analyst (from the blog "Powerline.")

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/02/022902.php

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Here is a list of reasons why the stock market is declining every day as the ineptitude of the Obama Administration is revealed.

http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=320027936229029

Personally I am concerned about the likelihood of war in the Middle East as Iran completes their quest for nuclear weapons. Then there is North Korea, which already has nuclear weapons, preparing to launch a ballistic missile that can reach the United States. I wonder if Obama will give up if threatened with a nuclear attack. But, we may not have a choice if Israel, feeling abandoned by the US) launches pre-emptive attacks Iran on their own.

Here is a liberal Democrat who thinks the Obama Administration is making some mistakes that the Republicans will be able to exploit. He thinks that the Republicans will make the case that the rich and the poor are ganging up on the middle class. Personally I think that is the situation, but the Democrats have managed to paint the Republicans as the party of the rich. Not mentioned, but I think that people may be beginning to realize that all of the stuff about Bush's violation of the Constitution, not recognizing civil rights of terrorists and so forth was just political hype, and that Obama is going to pretty much continue Bush's policies.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-02-17/stop-the-democratic-suicide/full/

Netanyahu is going to be given the opportunity to form a government in Israel. That does not surprise me. I think they realize that the Obama Administration is pro-Islam and anti-Israel, and they are going to have to go it alone for probably the next eight years. Thus they need a tough leader. It will be hard for Israel to knock out Iran's nuclear arms program, but they may feel that they have no choice given the Iranians continued threats to destroy them. I wonder how much support Iran actually has. I don't think the large Muslim counties like Saudi Arabia and Egypt would be sorry to see Iran's nuclear weapons program ended.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=426066

Obama is still in campaign mode even though the next election is still a year and a half away. I am disgusted with the way Obama, Biden, Kerry and Hillary Clinton are going around the world apologizing for America. The Obama policy of appeasement is going to do severe damage to the country.

Here is an article by Victor Davis Hanson that expresses my thoughts on the current situation very well. There are a lot of us who played by the rules and were cautious, and are now being punished and forced to bail out the very rich and some of the not so rich who took excessive risks. I see by the recent poll numbers that the majority of Americans hold Obama in higher regard than Jesus, so I guess the people who are personally responsible are now a minority.

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/our-battered-american/2/

The fact that the housing crisis is primarily in just a few area is little mentioned. It is primarily in California and neighboring states Nevada and Arizona, and in Florida and Michigan. I have seen Democrats identify Texas as one of the trouble spots, but I think that is just partisan politics since I live here and don't see any evidence that the Texas housing situation is anything like California. One other thing rarely reported is that most of the troubled loans in the critical states were for re-financing, rather than initial purchases. In other words, many of the troubled loans are to people who were basically speculators. Here is an article on this subject:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02212009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_foreclosure_five_156287.htm

Here is a discussion of the "motivation" of global warming deniers.
I think the reasons given for why the deniers are old retired guys is correct. The comment about how the definition of "liberal" and "conservative" is no longer meaningful is also correct. I think it is odd but absolutely correct that now people who do not support authoritarian government are vilified as "conservative." It appears to me that liberals now support totalitarian government.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2009%20February.htm#insult

Friday, February 20, 2009

A Canadian 12-year old girl made an excellent pro-life speech. Here is an article about it.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=425610

The predictions that the Arctic would be ice-free during 2008 turned out to be premature. Despite the data I still see a lot of MSM doomsday reporting that asserts that the Arctic ice is about to disappear. Here is a report on how the doomsday guys went wrong.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/19/0420255

Hillary Clinton says that she isn't certain that North Korea ever had a uranium program. However they do have six to ten nuclear bombs. The one they tested was a Pu 239 implosion device that sort of worked. They made the fissionable material used in the test with a plutonium re-processing program. A lot of people who are not informed about nuclear weapons probably think that Hillary's comment indicates that once again the evil Bush just made something up. The news articles do not explain why it is important whether or not North Korea has a uranium program. As far as the military threat from North Korea is concerned, it doesn't really matter a lot whether their nuclear weapons use plutonium or uranium. But, it may matter with regard to export of fissionable material to terrorist states. Plutonium nuclear weapons are more difficult to make than uranium weapons. The first nuclear device dropped by the US on Japan was "fat man," a Pu 239 implosion device. The second was "little boy" a Uranium device of the "gun barrel" type. The uranium type is much easier to build, and most discussion of "suitcase nukes" assumes a uranium "gun barrel" type. Most discussion I have seen considers fabrication of a Pu 239 implosion device to be beyond the capability of terrorist organizations. With a little analysis and experimentation I might be able to build a gun barrel type device if I had the uranium. But, there is no way I could build a Pu 239 implosion device without a lot of help and handling equipment that would be difficult to obtain.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Here is a good comment from "Flopping Aces." It's ironic that the head of Russia is warning us not to implement socialism. I think this is funny:

http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/02/19/russias-putin-warns-against-socialist-solutions-for-economic-trouble/#comments

I expect we will see more of this sort of harassment.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/19/report-oklahoma-city-pd-admits-mistake-pulling-man-anti-obama-sign/

The Secret Service will be busy again as they were under Clinton. I wonder if the Secret Service ever visited the entertainers who suggested that Bush and Cheney should be assassinated? If so it was not reported. I think Bush just shrugged it off. Don't expect Obama's Administration.

The Minnesota Senate election is still going. Powerline thinks Coleman is losing because he is being "outlawyered."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/02/022875.php

It is a sad state of affairs that we have to have lawyers count the votes. Somehow the lawyers are able to devine how people intended to vote. When I was young the Democrats deliberately designed the ballot so that interpretation by the election judge was necessary. For example, you were supposed to black out all of the names on the ballot except the one you wanted to vote for. There were a lot of candidates for President, so a lot of people just circled the one they wanted. The election judge then examined the non-conforming ballots. If the voter had circled the Democrat, the judge counted the vote. But, if the voter circled the Republican, the judge couldn't determine who the voter wanted, and the ballot was rejected. Apparently the Democrats still do this sort of thing though I'm unaware of how they do it now. I have noticed that challenges such as the one in Minnesota show up in jurisdictions where the Democrats control the election process.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Economic Policy in the United States


First Theodore Roosevelt had the Square Deal to help the middle class.

Then Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal to help the unemployed.

Next Harry Truman had the Fair Deal to help everyone.

Now Barack Obama has the Raw Deal to screw everyone.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Obama Administration congratulated Venezuela on their vote to eliminate term limits for the Presidents Office, clearing the way for Hugo Chavez to become President for life. No doubt Obama and his Democratic Party allies are excited because this is exactly what they have in mind for America. (This was discussed by some of Obama's supporters during the campaign, but was naturally downplayed by Obama in another one of his campaign lies.) Obama has already started some of the preliminary actions designed to help create one party control in the United States. Here is the view of "Flopping Aces:"

Obama’s State Dept. Praises Venezuela Vote Enabling Hugo Chavez to be Presidente for Life!


It’s no secret Obama and friends wish to emulate the same one party state tactics Chavez has found so successful!

AFP, February 16, 2008: The United States Tuesday welcomed Venezuela’s “civic” referendum lifting term limits for the president and all politicians, but urged support for democracy and tolerance in the country.
“We congratulate the civic and participatory spirit of the millions of Venezuelans who exercized their democratic right to vote,” State Department spokesman Noel Clay told AFP.

Venezuelans on Sunday voted 54 percent in favor of constitutional reform sought by President Hugo Chavez to run for unlimited reelection, in his bid to consolidate his brand of socialism critics compare to Cuba’s communism.

Just what brand of “socialism” is that? One where near total political and economic control of the state resides in the hands of the ruling elite with el Presidente Chavez the main man in charge.

Even the very liberal L.A. Times gets it:

Editorial:Venezuela just took a democratic step closer to dictatorship. On Sunday, President Hugo Chavez won the right to seek reelection ad infinitum, prevailing in a referendum that eliminated term limits for the presidency and other elected offices. Although the balloting was deemed valid by opposition leaders, who have said they will not contest the results, the victory came about because of Chavez’s gross misuse of government funds, government workers and federal facilities for the campaign, and neighborhood enforcers to “persuade” voters to support him. He lost a similar vote 14 months ago, but was clearly determined to become president-in-perpetuity and to have Venezuelans vote until they voted his way.


Conservatives in this country are witnessing a similar power grab as we watch Obama’s so-called “stimulus” plan hand out billions to reward liberals, including community organizers like ACORN (the equivalent of Venezuela’s neighborhood enforcers). That was matched with calls for the Fairness Doctrine to shut down political opposition and moves for greater state control of the banking and automotive sectors. Last, but not least, are Dem efforts to corrupt the census and make Republicans a permanent minority.

Reward for Socialist “Democracy?” Food Shortages!

And just what has been the reward to the Venezuelan people for all that “democracy” Obama’s State Dept. praised? Shortages of everyday staples like milk, eggs, sugar and cooking oil. Shortages we may add, brought about by socialist policies whose stated goal was to protect the poor from price gouging. Much better to starve than pay another bolivar so the kids can have milk.

With Obama’s looming control over vast sectors of the U.S. economy (designed to protect the consumer don’t you know?) how long will it be before the basics of American life are unavailable at any price?

Ah, but who cares as long as one party state socialism rules!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Senator Chris Dodd sneaked a provision into the pork bill that limits the pay of bankers. I saw an honest Banker type on TV discussing this. He said that the guys deserve those huge bonuses because it was really hard to sell those toxic mortgage packages to the Europeans. I guess that makes sense. Under that logic Bernie Madoff must deserve a lot of money because it must have been really difficult to run a successful Ponzi scheme for 30 years. Somehow our society has lost sight of the truth that reward should be tied to what people actually produce. Selling risky home mortgages doesn't actually produce anything. Loaning money to people who are unlikely to repay it should not be rewarded. That seems obvious to me, but seems to have been missed by the Ivy League geniuses that ran the Congress and the financial industry.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

It took 10 years for Chavez to get his "President for Life" approval in Venezueala. Can Obama achieve it in the US in only 8 years. That is all the time he has as President here.

Someone should tell Obama that the socialist fascism he wants for America consists of "worn out ideas from the past."

Here is the cartoon version of the famous book by Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. We are still early in the process, but Obama is trying to put us on the fast track.

http://www.mises.org/books/TRTS/

Today I read in the newspaper that Obama had a tremendous achievement in getting his pork-laden spending bill passed. Then, I saw the Democratic Party spinners on TV saying the same thing; they were spinning so hard that they must have gotten dizzy. They kept saying that people had predicted that Obama would not be able to get the bill through. I guess I'm getting old and senile because this has only been in discussion for two weeks, and I don't recall anyone saying that it would be difficult for the Democrats to get the bill passed. They have a solid majority in the House and in the Senate they only need two Republicans, which is easy since Senators Collins, Snowe, and Specter are liberals who were going to go along with whatever Obama wanted. Then, Obama turned writing the bill over to the Democrats in the House and Senate, with no opportunity for input from Republicans, whose votes they didn't need anyway. In the end, the only debate that happened was between House and Senate Democrats. Finally, 'the most transparent Administration in history' passed the bill without allowing time for the public to read it (which had been promised by Obama), and without allowing time for the the Congress people voting on it to read it. This was classic legislative steamroller tactics. And Democrats are trying to create mythology about how wonderful this was as it was happening. Apparently the public is willing to buy whatever Obama is selling even as it apparent that he is making it up as he goes.

In Buffalo, New York there was a Muslim man named Hassan who started a TV station dedicated to combating the negative impressions Americans have of Muslims. He had a beautiful wife who sued him for divorce, and got a protective order against him. As is often the case she would have been better served to have gotten a 0.38 special, but that would have been illegal in New York. Mr. Hassan reacted by beheading his wife. The news media doesn't want to stigmatize Muslims by reporting on this since, after all, American men do kill their wives. But, it seems to me that beheading, while common in Muslim countries, is rare in the US. It is not politically correct to report on anything negative about those peace loving Muslims.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Time Magazine has a list of the people they think are responsible for the financial meltdown. It seems to me that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank belong on the list along with several other Democrat Congress people. I would put Jamie Gorelick on the list on general principle due to her $20 million bonus, even though she probably never understood anything about the mortgage industry. I also suspect George Soros had something to do with it. Finally there are some traders whose names we don't know who did a lot of theoretically illegal naked short selling, but Cox did nothing about it. I'll have to read the article to find out how HGTV had anything to do with it.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/time_magazines_list_of_25_culp.html

Here is a good discussion about fascism. It has always been curious to me that liberals refer to the right as fascists because the two have so little in common. For example, fascists are collectivists who do not support individual liberty.

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2009/02/12/we-are-all-illiterates-now/2/

People often fail to recognize that equality and individual liberty are opposite sides of the coin. To achieve equality of outcome the state must necessarily restrict individual liberty. The United States was founded on a philosophy of allowing people "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Socialistic France had a philosphy of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality." Recently the United States has been moving toward equality of outcome, which has resulted in a loss of individual freedom, through government coercision and regulation. When Democrats talk about individual freedom, they focus on freedom to indulge in deviant sexual practices rather than economic freedom, for example, or even freedom of thought.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Democrats would like to eliminate gun ownership, but have run into an obstacle in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The way around that being pursued now is to eliminate ammunition. Here is something about state laws that was posted on the internet by "Silver Lion:"

Nobody can sell any ammunition after June 30, 2009

It has already started....

Ammunition Accountability Legislation

Remember how Obama said that he wasn't going to take your guns? Well, it seems that his allies in the anti-gun world have no problem with taking your ammo!

The bill 20 that is being pushed in 18 states (including Illinois and Indiana ) requires all ammunition to be encoded by the manufacture a data base of all ammunition sales. So they will know how much you buy and what calibers.

Nobody can sell any ammunition after June 30, 2009 unless the ammunition is coded.

Any privately held uncoded ammunition must be destroyed by July 1, 2011. (Including hand loaded ammo.)

They will also charge a .05 cent tax on every round so every box of ammo you buy will go up at least $2.50 or more!

If they can deprive you of ammo they do not need to take your gun!

This legislation is currently pending in 18 states: Alabama , Arizona , California , Connecticut , Hawaii , Illinois , Indiana , Kentucky , Maryland , Mississippi , Missouri , New Jersey , New York , Pennsylvania , Rhode Island , South Carolina , Tennessee , and Washington .

Send to your friends in these states AND fight to dissolve this BILL!!

To find more about the anti-gun group that is sponsoring this legislation and the specific legislation for each state, go to:

http://ammunitionaccountability.org/Legislation.htm "

I suspect that most people are unaware that the financial wizards on Wall Street were mostly contributors to liberal Democrats. It is not surprising to me given that the two groups share a philosophy that there is "something for nothing." Things worked out pretty well for the top wizards. When things collapsed, they skated away with millions of dollars. Things also worked out for liberal Democrats: they now have total control of the US government with the chance that they can gain permanent control.

http://townhall.com/columnists/EmmettTyrrell/2009/02/12/wall_street_wizards_no_more

According to Machiavelli in The Prince, when bad things start happening to you, the cause is action by your enemy. The Republican Party has a lot of powerful enemies such as George Soros, Russia, Venezula, etc. and a lot of bad things happened to them during the last Presidential election. There was an electronic run on the US financial system just a McCain got the lead in the Presidential race. Could that be a coincidence? Maybe not. Here is an article that discusses what happened.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/02/12/who_attacked_our_economy_why_does_no_one_care?page=full&comments=true

Bush may have been interested in finding out who did it, but, I predict Obama has no interest in finding out who did it so we won't know who did it for a long time, if ever.

The system was vulnerable because of the Bush Administration's failure to realize that the "mark to market" accounting change that was made in the Fall of 2007 would cause a crash any time there was a disruption of the financial system. "Mark to Market" sounds good to conservatives, but is a disaster waiting to happen. When there is a disruption mark to market inherently causes a downward spiral. If no one will bid on a mortgage package, then mark to market requires that the package must be valued at zero, even though the underlying loans are performing, and the homes are clearly still worth something. Consider what happens during a hurricane. We do not allow people to charge exorbitant prices for water and gasoline. The same philosophy should prevail in the markets; why should we require that loans be considered as worthless because there is temporarily no buyer? Most bankers think that mark to market should not be used for mortgage loans. Changing that rule would pretty much end the current crisis. It is telling that the Obama Administration does not want to modify mark to market. That indicates to me that Obama does not want this crisis to end. It is too useful to him to in supporting his attempt to bring socialism to America.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I'm not the only one who thinks Obama is a fascist with some sort of messiah complex. Here is a blog from the former NASA flight surgeon and psychiatrist, Pat Santy. Her blog, Dr. Sanity is well worth reading.

FATAL CONCEITS, COMPLEX SYSTEMS, AND THE NARCISSISM OF BARACK OBAMA

I thought it was interesting last night in the Press Conference that President/Messiah Obama had absolute certainty that his $$ Trillion 'stimulus' was the only thing that could save us from utter and irreversible economic catastrophe. His certainty about this leads me to conclude that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

Let me explain the reasons for this conclusion.

James K. Glassman in Commentary today discusses "Stimulus: A History of Folly" where he carefully looks at all the situation since the Great Depression when the government used fiscal or monetary 'stimulation' to get the economy moving again. He concludes (and please read the entire thing):
The truth is that we have learned almost nothing about the use of fiscal stimulus since the Great Depression, and it is a fatal conceit to assume that we can hurriedly construct a fiscal policy that will produce the prescribed results today. Economists seem to admit this fact by advocating what they prefer anyway, for political or ideological reasons....

On being presented the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, Friedrich von Hayek devoted his Stockholm lecture to acknowledging the severe limitations of his profession. “It seems to me,” he said, “that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences—an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error.” Government simply cannot know enough to direct an economy successfully, and when the President claims that his fiscal stimulus plan will create (or save) at least three million jobs, he is taking a wild, and dangerous, leap. Said Hayek:
If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

What is that environment? First, it provides a confidence that, in a crisis, bank deposits are safe and insurance policies will be paid in full. Such confidence can be provided only by the government of the United States in its legitimate and essential role as the lender of last resort. Second, the environment supports, rather than denigrates or browbeats, productive members of society. The U.S. will not emerge from a serious recession unless businesses and investors lead it out. Third, it recognizes that Americans have undergone a financial calamity and that we need time to adjust; we cannot, like a car battery, be shocked back to life, and we aren’t in the mood to have someone blow in our ear.

In fact, stimulus may be precisely the wrong metaphor. Rather than getting jazzed up, we need to be calmed down and to take the time to learn from the Great Depression, a time when government did too much, not too little.

What our Fearmonger-in-Chief has left out of his grandiose certainty that only his plan will save us from certain doom is the fact that the economy is a complex system. In fact, it is a very very complex system.

Michael Crichton gave a classic talk some years back about complex systems and how difficult it is to predict what they will or won't do; let alone to try to 'manage' them. Crichton's speech was primarily about how badly the environment was being managed by "environmentalists"; but his concluding ideas are very applicable to the unintended consequences that always result from any attempt to intervene in a complex system:
Now, if we are to do better in this new century, what must we do differently? In a word, we must embrace complexity theory. We must understand complex systems.

We live in a world of complex systems. The environment is a complex system. The government is a complex system. Financial markets are complex systems. The human mind is a complex system---most minds, at least.

By a complex system I mean one in which the elements of the system interact among themselves, such that any modification we make to the system will produce results that we cannot predict in advance.

Furthermore, a complex system demonstrates sensitivity to initial conditions. You can get one result on one day, but the identical interaction the next day may yield a different result. We cannot know with certainty how the system will respond.

Third, when we interact with a complex system, we may provoke downstream consequences that emerge weeks or even years later. We must always be watchful for delayed and untoward consequences.

The science that underlies our understanding of complex systems is now thirty years old. A third of a century should be plenty of time for this knowledge and to filter down to everyday consciousness, but except for slogans—like the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane halfway around the world—not much has penetrated ordinary human thinking.

On the other hand, complexity theory has raced through the financial world. It has been briskly incorporated into medicine. But organizations that care about the environment do not seem to notice that their ministrations are deleterious in many cases. Lawmakers do not seem to notice when their laws have unexpected consequences, or make things worse. Governors and mayors and managers may manage their complex systems well or badly, but if they manage well, it is usually because they have an instinctive understanding of how to deal with complex systems. Most managers fail.

Why? Our human predisposition treat all systems as linear when they are not. A linear system is a rocket flying to Mars. Or a cannonball fired from a canon. Its behavior is quite easily described mathematically. A complex system is water gurgling over rocks, or air flowing over a bird’s wing. Here the mathematics are complicated, and in fact no understanding of these systems was possible until the widespread availability of computers.

One complex system that most people have dealt with is a child. If so, you've probably experienced that when you give the child an instruction, you can never be certain what response you will get. Especially if the child is a teenager. And similarly, you can’t be certain that an identical interaction on another day won’t lead to spectacularly different results.

If you have a teenager, or if you invest in the stock market, you know very well that a complex system cannot be controlled, it can only be managed. Because responses cannot be predicted, the system can only be observed and responded to. The system may resist attempts to change its state. It may show resiliency. Or fragility. Or both.

An important feature of complex systems is that we don’t know how they work. We don’t understand them except in a general way; we simply interact with them. Whenever we think we understand them, we learn we don’t. Sometimes spectacularly.

I urge you to read Crichton's entire argument, because it is extremely good and unquestionably relevant (and devastating) to the fatal conceit that this hugemongous spending spree our manic and hysterical government is about to engage in is going to solve our economic problem. It is actually much more certain to have unintended and severely negative consequences that no one could have possibly imagined.

Consider for a moment the Fannie and Freddie Lending Fiasco that was a critical factor in the mortgage meltdown. Did the government and its stooges like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd--whose intentions were sooo pure and good and compassionate (I mean, who could possibly object to making the American dream affordable to low-income citizens who could not afford a mortgage?)-- even imagine in their wildest fantasies that such a benign and well-meaning intervention could have such dire consequences for the entire financial system?? Of course not. First of all, they could not imagine it because they were thinking linearly; and second, they were too busy patting themselves on the back for being such wonderful, compassionate and well-meaning people it was hard for them to appreciate they were functioning in a narcissistic and self-gratifying bubble of emotion.

Barack Obama not only has been hailed as a Messiah by the clueless left, he actually seems to think of himself as The One; and the fatal conceit that he knows how to 'properly' manipulate the complex system known as the US Economy is nothing but a grandiose narcissistic fantasy that is doomed from the start.

I repeat, he doesn't have a clue to what he is doing, or what unintended economic consequences he and the Democratic Congress are about to unleash. But, since we are all in this together, we are all about to find out.

I notice Obama keeps saying that he inherited the current $$ Trillion debt from the evil BusHitler; but at least it took Bush 8 years to get us that far into debt--Obama's spending spree will triple that inherited debt in a mere 3 month timeframe! One wonders what the Miracle Worker will do for an encore? i.e., when his stimulus doesn't stimulate in the same way FDR's stimulus didn't back in the 30's and actually prolonged the Great Depression.

I think the failure of the stimulus will be the impetus and the justification to fully nationalize a number of key industries. Make no mistake: it will be business and the Market that will be blamed for the failure of Obama's recovery plan; and certainly not the government or any of the plan's architects. Knowing the underlying neo-Marxist and fundamentally fascist ideology that drives the President and many of his more extreme supporters (who regularly stoke the fires of class envy and identity politics) you can bet that they really don't much care what happens either way. Because, once the stimulus is passed, no matter what happens, we will be on an almost irreversible course toward socialism and economic suicide
.

Michael Crichton's essay on Complex Systems mentioned above is also well worth reading.

A special Court has ruled that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. This is a set-back for activists like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and others who have the view that if anyone has some misfortune, that someone should have to pay. Anyone close by that has money should have to pay, never mind whether or not they are responsible; a sort of lotto justice. I see some problems with having courts decide scientific issues because many judges operate based on politics rather than science, but I suppose in our system their is no other choice.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Kyle-Anne Shiver is doubtful about Obama's character, based on his background.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/murphys_law_the_peter_principl.html

The University of Chicago Hospital is not going to hire anyone into the $300,000 per year job that Michelle Obama had held. Why am I not surprised? This may be because the new Senator's wife doesn't want a job.

The so-called stimulus package about to be voted into law by Congress contains the second part of the stealth adoption of socialized medicine In the USA. The first step was lifting the income limit on the SCHIP program, so it would apply to children of middle income parents. Tom Daschle has advocated the stealth approach. He said that the precursor to socialized medicine needs to be slipped into a spending bill at the start of the Administration to avoid any debate. Debate such as with the Hillary Plan must be avoided at all costs. Here is an article about how the Democrats are bringing us socialized medicine.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs

The President's so-called stimulus bill is full of pork. Here is an example. I wonder what the government will do with $300 million worth of these cheesy looking electric vehicles? This thing doesn't look as good as some golf carts I've driven. It might be safe to drive this buggy around the Johnson Space Center in Houston, but it would be risky to drive around Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL.

http://www.cheatseekingmissiles.com/2009/02/11/nah-its-not-pork/

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

In President Obama's press conference yesterday Helen Thomas asked if there were any so-called terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since I assume she saw the video of guys wearing black hoods beheaded a Polish engineer that was on the internet yesterday, she apparently does not regard those guys as terrorists. Like Michael Moore, movie stars and other celebrities she must regard those guys as freedom fighters. They want freedom to blow up schools for girls, to beat women who appear in public without an escort, to have whipped or executed girls who are raped, and, as was related by one Taliban member, to decide by democratic vote whether to throw homosexuals off of tall buildings or to crush them by pushing a wall down on them. I suppose that if you believe in moral relativism and multiculturalism, you have to be willing to accept someone else's idea of freedom.

Obama says that Bush policies failed because he cut taxes and doubled the deficit. Obama says he is going to change things. He is going to cut taxes and double the deficit. If you look at it that way, it doesn't look much like a change.

Today while I was working out at the Maverick, the TV was on and the Treasury Secretary was making a speech, and the Dow Jones Average fell steadily as he spoke. I told the elderly Jewish lady on the treadmill next to me that it didn't appear that people liked what they were hearing, and that I listened to Obama last night and wasn't impressed by him either. She said she had watched Obama last night, and concluded that she voted for the wrong person.

The Democrats have done a masterful job of setting a bomb that blew up the Republicans. It appears now that they succeeded in blowing up the economy of the whole country. How was it done? First there was the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Democrats of course deny it, but government regulators forced banks and other financial institutions to loan money to minorities to buy homes according to a quota. It turned out that there were not enough minorities who were good credit risks who wanted to buy a home to meet the quota. So loans were made to minorities who were unlikely to be able to make the payments. It turned out that there was a lot of greed in mortgage brokers so they enthusiastically sold homes that they knew the borrower could not afford to increase their fees. At the same time, some former Clinton officials and buddies of Barney Frank showed the financial institutions how they could package the bad loans with good ones and then sell the entire package to unwary investors. The investment packages were "insured" by AIG without having any actual assets backing up the insurance. (One banker wrote an email that has surfaced in which he said that the mortgage packages were crap, but as long as they could get stupid Europeans buy them, everything was OK) Then geniuses like Robert Rubin dropped out of the Clinton Administration and got paid millions of dollars ($110 million in Rubin's case) for advice to financial institutions to increase their leverage to 30 to 1, and in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, to 70 to 1. After the Enron fiasco, rules were changed so that financial institutions had to value their assets at the market price, IE. 'mark to market.' This is a logical requirement for a trading company, but makes no sense for financial institutions that has mortgage loans. Clever traders then realized that if everyone stopped bidding on the packages of mortgage loans, they would be worthless. The banks and investment companies would have to reduce their assets, and fortunes could be made by shorting the stock of those financial institutions. This was going to work so well that some of the clever traders created mortgages out of thin air and got them insured. They basically sold short the mortgages, and shorted the financial institutions that bought them. As the value of the mortgages fell, the market for them collapsed, and the heavily leveraged mortgage companies quickly became insolvent. The insurer, AIG, immediately became insolvent. One way to slow the crisis would be to get rid of mark to market for financial institutions and change back to the process used in the 1980's. Of course traders like the mark to market rule since it makes it easy for them to manipulate the market. I don't know if there was a Democrat planner who actually set this up, but I am certain that if something like this had benefited Republicans, it would have been blamed on Karl Rove.

Here is an article with any perspective on this issue.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/2/10/geithner-from-indispensable-to-indecipherable.html

Obama and the Democrats say they want to return science to government. As usual, this is call is misdirection. They actually want to politicize science. They like to use computer models, which they incorrectly call science, to predict that the earth is warming due to man's activities, and thus to take control of energy policy and thereby industrial policy for the entire nation. They also want to take control of the census, and to use computer models to find people who do not exist for political purposes. Here is a WSJ article on this initiative.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123423384887066377.html

Monday, February 09, 2009

I saw Cher speaking on TV. She does not like Republicans. She is a monument to what expensive plastic surgery can do.

Obama has reached out the hand of friendship to Iran and Russia. They both bit his hand, and were both downright insulting. They seem to be contemptuous of "soft power." I wonder if Obama will learn that weakness does not make bullies like you. Carter never did learn that lesson.

I wonder how Obama is going to style himself. All fascist leaders need a good nickname. I see him referred to a lot as The One. I guess that is pretty catchy. Mussolini was "il Duce," which I think is "the Leader." Hitler was "der Fuhrer," which is also "The Leader." Obama is appointing a lot of "czar's" for the White House who apparently are to do the same job as Cabinet Secretaries, one of his tricky moves to centralize power directly under himself. Maybe he will style himself "The Czar of Czars." That is pretty catchy, sort of like "The King of Kings," something that would be appropriate for the latter day messiah.

I think Obama's stimulus package is an unmitigated disaster that will do little good in the near term, and much damage in the long term. Here is the view of Harvard's Robert Barro:

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn't really matter that much.

Here is a good description of the type of fascism that has enveloped the entire world now that the USA has succumbed to it. I think the author is correct in that this is the type of government that the majority of people want. The author calls it 'participatory fascism,' and I think that is a good term. It is what George Bush pushed, and what John McCain proposed. I think Obama would like something more like Mussolini had, and I hope people resist that, but they may not. We have a lot of people now who desire an autocratic leader.

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/61504.html

Here is a list of the cities with the highest poverty rates in the USA that I found on the internet. Based on what I can recall, the list looks like it is correct. I suppose there could be an argument about whether the cities are poor because they are governed by Democrats, or if the people elect Democrats because they are poor. In either event Democrats have not helped the people in those cities. I think Democrats are poised to bring the entire nation to the state of the poor cities by instituting the socialistic welfare programs that have failed.

Detroit (1st on the poverty list)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961 (48 years);

Buffalo (2nd)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1954 (55 years);

Cincinnati (3rd)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1984 (25 years);

Cleveland (4th)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1989 (20 years);

Miami (5th)... has never had a Republican mayor;

St. Louis (6th)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1949 (60 years);

El Paso (7th)... has never had a Republican mayor;

Milwaukee (8th)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1908 (100 years);

Philadelphia (9th)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1952 (57 years);

Newark (10th)... hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1907 (101 years).

Ann Coulter asks a good question. Democrats claim that poverty causes crime, so how do they explain Bernie Madoff?

I have another question. Why don't we acknowledge that the $110 million paid to Robert Rubin for his advice that destroyed the US financial markets was legalized robbery? Greed may be good, but a lot of Wall Street types and Corporate CEOs seem to have carried way too far.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

It will be interesting to see how Obama deals with the situation in Iraq. It looks more and more like the US has won. That is unacceptable to Democrats, so how can Obama turn it around. I think he would like to announce defeat and leave, but the public may be too aware of the true situation so that may not be viable. I'm sure the Democrats are working on a a way to deny a victory to Bush. Here are some thoughts on this from 'Flopping Aces:'

http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/02/08/the-leaders-who-brought-victory-to-iraq/#more-16637

Obama is moving rapidly to funnel billions of dollars to his labor unions and Acorn supporters. The blog Strata Sphere is concerned that Obama is starting a civil war. There is no doubt that Obama and the Democrats are moving to put the traditionally non-partisan government institutions firmly under the control of Obama.

The socialists are definitely running the nuthouse in DC. President Obama, in the middle of the worst recession in a couple of decades (not the Great Depression as the President likes to exaggerate) has decided to destroy the construction industry by blocking 84% of the companies from the money in the stimulus pork-a-thon package:

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today denounced an Executive Order signed by President Obama that repeals Executive Order 13202, that prohibited federal agencies and recipients of federal funding from requiring contractors to sign union-only project labor agreements (PLAs) as a condition of performing work on federal and federally funded construction projects.

“Today’s decision to repeal Executive Order 13202 opens the door to waste and discrimination in federal and federally funded construction contracts,” said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. “This action removes the safeguards that prohibited discrimination based upon union affiliation in the awarding of federal contracts.

This allows the socialists to funnel the stimulus money to union-only companies, which is that small 15% owned and controlled by the mob and their liberal allies.

Between this act and the grabbing of the US Census to now be controlled by the President it is becoming clear the liberals will only share in the stimulus if the American People declare fealty to their party. The great socialist civil war is beginning by a blatant and crude grab for power and federal money.

Here is a view of the Obama Presidency from Great Britain. Conservatives around the world are alarmed at what is happening in America, because America is the last place on Earth where people value individual liberty. Obama wants to change that.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3332636/america-what-have-you-done.thtml

A major problem that is now occurring is scientists manipulating data to achieve results that they want. So far the public still has a lot of faith in proclamations by scientists, but I think that will change unless a better review process can be implemented. The MMR vaccine given to babies is an example of how the current situation can go wrong. One study concluded that the MMR vaccine increased the incidence of autism. A not very smart politician named Robert Kennedy, Jr. picked up on this, and launched a major publicity campaign that convinced a lot of people to not vaccinate their children. Many additional studies were done that showed no correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism, but Kennedy and others continued their campaign. Now an investigation calls the initial study into question. (The initial study involved such a small sample that I can't see why anyone ever acted on the results without more study.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece

Several authors of the original report have now withdrawn their support.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E4DE133FF937A35750C0A9629C8B63

Here is a study that says that IQ has gone down in Great Britain over the past 30 years. IQ is always a contentious subject. Most liberals think IQ is meaningless, except when mentioning their own. When I was in high school back in the early 50's, the average IQ in Texas was 102, but now the average is 98. Reasons for the decline are debatable. The Great Britain study gives a few reasons, such as computer games rather than reading and smoking marijuana.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4548943/British-teenagers-have-lower-IQs-than-their-counterparts-did-30-years-ago.html

Saturday, February 07, 2009

The liberals in America worry a lot about how Islamic Terrorists are treated in Gitmo. They don't worry about how terrorists treat people they capture, which usually results in the captive being beheaded. Here is a story about one prisoner of terrorists:

http://www.cheatseekingmissiles.com/2009/02/07/fair-treatment-of-prisoners/

Obama appears to be sympathetic to terrorists, and his Attorney General got Clinton to pardon 16 terrorists back on Clinton's last day in office.

Expect more of this under the Obama Administration. I expect an all out attack on freedom of speech. Senator Debbie Stabenow along with Senators Reid and Boxer, wants to get Rush off of the air with some sort of new 'fairness Doctrine.' (Stabenow's husband is an executive with the failed liberal radio network, Air America. She probably doesn't want to put Air America off the air, so will have to carefully craft any law aimed at Rush.) In the meantime, expect more strongarm tactics from the Obama Administration. It has been typical of Democrat Presidents since Roosevelt (with the exception of Truman and, maybe, Carter) to aggressively use the IRS, the Justice Department and intelligence agencies against their political enemies.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0209/Reporter_restrained_after_Panetta_hearing.html

Obama has taken direct control of the census process, and has had the census budget increased by $1 billion. I take this as a bad sign, though it is not unexpected. I would look for Acorn to now become involved in the census activity. The census is important in apportioning members of the House of Representatives among the states, and it may be possible to garner a few extra seats for the Democrats by politicizing the process. There are also some gerrymandering possibilities. The extra money will enable Obama to put more of his 'community organizer' buddies on the government payroll. (Community Organizer is another name for Saul Alinsky like socialist/communist agitators.)

Some former goverment functionary of some sort named Tice went on NBC the other day, and said that the Bush Administration had been monitoring the phone calls and emails of everyone in America. That sounds a bit far-fetched to me. In Russia newspeople who criticize the government get gunned down on the street. I don't recall any thing like that happening in the US during the Bush Administration. The only unreasonable jailing I read about was reporters who refused to testify in the Libby case, where the Bush Administration was being investigated. If we assume that Tice was correct, I have to wonder how Bush did it. There are 300 million people in America. There are billions of emails and phone calls each day. It would have taken millions of people to monitor all of that traffic. I suppose if we assume that Karl Rove really is the devil, he could have done it. If Bush had that kind of power, how did Republicans lose the 2006 election to say nothing of the 2008 election.

Michael Steele was named head of the RNC, and the Washington Post immediately did a hit job on him using a confidential document they were 'inadvertently" sent by the U. S. Attorney's office. The fascists are firmly in control of the US government now, and the Republicans are probably doomed as Obama will use the power of the government to destroy the leadership. George Bush made the mistake of not firing the fascists in government left over from the Clinton Administration, and they sabotaged him from the inside by leaking information. Look for the IRS to start vigorous investigation of Obama's critics. Here is the story about Steele:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWE5MWI4NjA1NzVkNThmMDk4NzllYWYxMmZkMzc0ODk=

The recent financial crisis has brought to light on of the major problems with Corporate America, which is the lack of control the owners have over the management of large Corporations. It is clear that the CEO's of major banks were more concerned with increasing their own oversize bonuses than they were in protecting their shareholders interests. CEOs acted like they were the owners, but without any person financial responsibility. It has been clear to me for some time that something has to be done to give owners control of Corporations, or capitalism will collapse. Here is the view of Carl Icahn on this issue:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123396742337359087.html

British writer Peter Hitchens thinks that the election of Obama signals the end of America as the "last, best hope of the world." I think he could be on to something. There is no doubt that Obama is bringing European-style socialism to America, and I doubt it works any better here than it has there. Look for an increasingly class-based society with high unemployment forever, and stagflation. The entire country will soon look like the cities run by black politicians, like Detroit, or by Mexicans, like Los Angeles.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084111/PETER-HITCHENS-The-night-waved-goodbye-America--best-hope-Earth.html

Who knew that it was an insult to call someone Scottish in Great Britain? Or that calling the Prime Minister an idiot was an insult to the mentally challenged.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1137242/Im-sorry-calling-Brown-eyed-Scottish-hes-STILL-idiot-says-Clarkson.html.

In America I suppose it is not an insult to call a person Scots-Irish, but it is now acceptable to insult Americans of Scots-Irish descent by implying they are evil racists.

Every four (or eight) years there is a lot of controversy as the Senate seeks to confirm the new President's Cabinet appointments. A lot of the appointees (particularly Democrats) are revealed to have some sort of ethical issues. Often taxes are the issue. I have often thought it would have been fun to be nominated for one of those positions to see what the politicians could have found to use against me. I can't think of anything in my past that could be used against me, but, I suspect that most of Obama's appointees couldn't either. One area where possibly no one could stand close scrutiny is in the income tax area. I actually think I over-pay income tax; that I give the benefit of the doubt to the IRS. But the tax code is so many hundreds of pages, and the language so arcane, that probably some error could be found in any one's tax return.

I am shocked, shocked to learn that A-Rod was juiced when he played for the Texas Rangers. According to Sports Illustrated he was one of 104 major league baseball players (out of 1198) who were on steroids in 2003. Taking steroids was not banned by major league baseball until 2004. I wonder how much steroids improve a player's performance? Considering Barry Bonds, who was better as he approached 40 years old on steroids than he was at 27 when he wasn't on steroids, it appears that steroids do improve performance. Here is the SI article:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/02/07/alex-rodriguez-steroids/index.html

Friday, February 06, 2009

No country in the history of the world has ever offered enemy combatants who are captured the same civil rights as citizens. At least until now. Tat is exactly what Obama and the Democrats now propose to do. Obama has decided to close Gitmo and to come up with a method other than Military Tribunals to try detainees. Here is an article from neo neocon with comments from the prosecutor from the first World Trade Center bombing prosecution on why it is a bad idea to give Constitutional rights to enemy combatants.

http://neoneocon.com/2009/02/06/war-on-guantanamo/

What is the difference in what Obama offers and what Bush was doing. Bush rarely used harsh interrogation methods, and only for terrorists who had important information on planned attacks on America. It sounds like Obama will do the same as Bush. So what was the campaign rhetoric about? Just more politician's lies I suppose.

http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com/2009/02/panetta-rendition-will-continue-would.html

I get a lot of emails telling me how to invest to make money quickly. Today I got one that suggested investing in the 'green' technologies that the Obama Administration is going to push. The author said not to waste time arguing about whether or not global warming is a myth. It doesn't matter. What matters is that there is money to be made. I remember seeing the same sort of argument back during the Carter Administration. It didn't work out too well back then except for government bureaucrats. The industrial investments were major losers.

Lincoln Steffens went to Russia back in the 1930's and said, "I've seen the future, and it works." It turns out that he let his communist ideology cloud his perception of what he saw, and he was wrong about the future. Now we have a Briton who says he has seen the future of the USA under Obama (which is socialism similar to what has caused the imminent collapse of Britain), and it doesn't work. Maybe he will also prove to be as wrong in his assessment as Steffens was, but I'm afraid he will prove to be right.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985887?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1596985887

Here is a good analysis of the Sarah Palin phenomena and the current political situation in America. I agree with the author's conclusion that Palin helped McCain, but that McCain failed because he offered no vision for the country. He is a reformer and a maverick, but he has no vision of where he wants the country to go. I agree with that assessment, and that is the reason that I didn't like McCain as a candidate for President. As the old saying goes, 'you can't beat something with nothing,' even if the something is liberal fascism.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-meaning-of-sarah-palin-14674?page=all

Thursday, February 05, 2009

The Democrats are in total control of the government, so, as expected, they are again trying to outlaw guns from the country. They know that in order to establish the fascist state they so fervently desire, they need to get guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. Australia and Great Britain have banned guns in the last few years, and have seen crime and gun violence escalate. But, Democrats, like the socialists in Australia and Great Britain, are not interested in controlling crime. They are interested in removing power from the people. Here is an article about the just introduced HR 45.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/more_gun_control_introduced_in.html

Tom Maguire relates this story of a stupid stunt pulled by Bill Gates.

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/02/its-good-to-be-rich.html

I wonder if Gates also pointed out that mosquitoes do not correlate with Global Warming, despite what Al Gore says. Alaska, for example, has plenty of mosquitoes including some as large as dive bombers, and others so small they are referred to a "no see 'em."

There has not been much in the news about the ice storm in Kentucky (no doubt caused by Global Warming, now termed 'climate change'). Some rude people have pointed out that FEMA has not made an appearance to help out yet. Actually that is the way FEMA has historically operated, coming in about a month after the event to help clean up. But, the rules were changed without the laws being changed when Katrina happened. Of course, in the case of Katrina almost half of the people affected were black, and that made all the difference. In Kentucky the people suffering are mostly white (and probably voted Republican), so there is no MSM or Democratic Party interest. Here is an article from the blog 'Cheat Seeking Missile.' (There is a good picture of power lines dragged down by ice.)

http://www.cheatseekingmissiles.com/2009/02/05/obamas-katrina/

I just saw a clip of Robert Kennedy, Jr. on TV in which he was asked if he had said that hog farms were a more serious threat to America than terrorists. He replied that he didn't know if the quote was accurate, but that he believes it. I have watched him for the past few years as he makes ridiculous comments about the environment. I suppose people listen to his opinion because he is a celebrity, and his opinions are of the same level of maturity as those of movie stars. Robert Kennedy, Jr. along with Britain's Prince Charles are prime examples of why heredity should not the basis for choosing political leaders.

Recently I read in the news that researchers had determined that the Antarctic was warming after all, thus confirming the greenhouse gas global warming hypothesis that requires faster temperature increases at the poles. This determination seemed dubious to me, because the researchers had used a mathematical model to determine what temperatures were in places far from where any measurements were made. It turns out that the problem with the analysis was worse than I thought. This is another case, like the famous and now thoroughly discredited Mann Hockeystick, where data have been manipulated to produce the desired result. Here is an article explaining what happened.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/going_cold_on_antarctic_warming

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

The Democrats did a great job of demonizing George Bush. They caused the current financial crisis and will blame it on Bush for the rest of time. Here is a bit of video showing Democrats saying that the mortgage industry was doing a great job even as Bush and others were warning about the risk in the system. As a Democrat told me recently, it was Bush's fault because he wasn't smart enough to defeat the Democrats. Or something like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&eurl=http://macsmind.com/wordpress/&feature=player_embedded

The Iranians just launched an earth orbiting satellite. How can that be, since just last month our intelligence agency said that Iran was at lest two or three years away from launching a satellite? Last year our National Intelligence Assessment said the Iranians had suspended their nuclear weapons program back in 2003. Of course that was a purely political ploy meant to embarrass President Bush. Our intelligence agencies are obviously inept, and have been since the Church Committee damaged them back during the Carter era. Democrats have long argued that we don't need intelligence because of the potential harm those agencies might do to our democracy. Maybe Obama will recognize the failure of our intelligence agencies and reform them. But, I doubt that he will.

The MSM claims that the reason they attack Republicans because of their moral lapses when one is revealed to have a mistress, or to be caught tapping out a gay message in the men's room is because of the Republicans hypocrisy. Thus they don't attack John Edwards for having a mistress while his wife is in a hospital undergoing cancer treatment because Edwards didn't campaign on 'family values' so he is not a hypocrite. Given that explanation, why hasn't the MSM attacked the Democrats because so many of their appointees for high level positions in the government didn't pay their taxes. After all, the Democrats campaign for higher taxes, and Joe Biden said paying taxes was patriotic. Could it be that the real reason for this is that the MSM are in the tank for the Democrats?

One of the primary goals of Marxism was the destruction of the middle class. That has also been a goal of the Democratic Party since it was taken over by the liberal fascists during the Vietnam War. Jimmy Carter worked toward this goal during his Presidency, and the activity increased while Clinton was President. Obama and the Democrats talk about 'saving' the middle class a lot, but that is misdirection. The power base of the Democrats is the poor and the very rich. They have enough of the very rich to provide all of the campaign money they need, but they need more of the poor to provide the votes. This explains why they encourage illegal immigration and fund Acorn to register the poor to vote. The strategy is to get more than half of the population entirely dependent on the government, and thus voters to keep in power the Democrats who promise them goodies. Obama plans to push through a tax bill that will eliminate 60% of the population from the income tax rolls. Obama will also try to reduce or eliminate social security and medicare taxes on the bottom half of the income distribution. Obama will talk a lot about making the rich pay their 'fair share.' Of course, as Leona Helmsly famously said, "Only the little people pay taxes." That has been borne out in the Congressional scrutiny of Obama's selections for high-level government positions. Here is an article that I don't entirely agree with, but that offers some analysis of the difference between classical liberals and current-day 'progressives,' who I would call liberal fascists.

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/02/is-classical-liberalism-selfish.html

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

A lot of the MSM and others on the left including a lot of politicians and celebrities see moral equivalence between Western Civilization and Islamic terrorists. These are the people who see the murderous thug Che Guevara Lynch as a hero. Michael Moore is famous for saying (and I think, hoping) that the terrorists would win. Here are comments from Daniel Pearl's father on this phenomena.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123362422088941893.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Frank Gaffney doesn't think much of Obama'a apparent offer to submit to Islam. (Obama may not have meant to signal submission, but the Muslims interpreted it that way. If he didn't mean it, then he failed to communicate.) I agree with Gaffney. Not only did Obama appear to offer surrender, he also took a cheap shot at Clinton and Bush. Obama is the master of the cheap shot. I predict that his fellow politicians will not like him much after a few years. Here are Gaffney's comments:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/03/s-u-b-m-i-s-s-i-o-n/

Here is a good review of international politics. The world of full of threats to the USA. The Obama team of Clinton and Carter re-treads is remarkably ideologically ill-equipped to deal with the current threats. Basically, they will retreat to a 'Fortress America' position, a strategy that is ill-suited to the current world situation. Here is the review:

http://newledger.com/2009/02/its-not-just-generals-who-fight-the-last-war/

Today I talked to a Democrat from Maine who said he originally supported Hillary, but now thinks Obama is the one to save us from the evil wrought by Bush. He mentioned the dumb deregulation policies of Bush. I said I didn't recall Bush deregulation of anything, so which ones caused the problem. He said he knew Texans liked Bush, but Bush was the dumbest man ever to be President. I said that it appeared to me that Democrats had as much to do with the financial situation as Bush. The Democrat geniuses from the Clinton Administration like Robert Rubin, Franklin Raines, Barney Frank and Jamie Gorelick had more to financial institutions increasing their leverage to ridiculous heights than Bush did, and in fact, Bush tried to stop them. He said Bush was too dumb to prevent the excesses. It always amazes me how well all Democrats all know the talking points. I still haven't found a Democrat who can tell me exactly what Bush deregulated that caused the problem.