Wasting Time With Alex

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

How bad are things getting?

Well they are getting real, real bad. Revenue is way down compared to what was collected same time last year. And remember how last year, according to the MSM, we were in a horrible recession and doomed - also Bush was in the WH, and the media had a vested interest in getting a dmeocrat elected - but are we hearing anything about how much worse things are now from them? Heh, don’t bother. They would likely blame Bush for it still. But the numbers don’t lie:





And as they project these numbers for the rest of the year, it gets even worse! The government is going to come up short. Way short.

The short story is that things are getting worse. Much worse. And while I am sure the moonbats will blame Bush, the fact is this is happening because of them. Do not forget to put this revenue shortfall into perspective either. We have borrowed $4 trillion, plan to borrow as much as $10 trillion - so far, there is room for a lot more according to the left - over the next 10 years, and that doesn’t include the healthcare takeover by government. The housing market is also still heading south, despite, or perhaps exactly because of, all the government meddling and hocus pocus. Couple that with the massive new “Cap and Tax” hike, and you are now looking at horrible economic killers. The stock market is showing that. And energy prices are coming back up. Inflation is inevitable, and when it comes it will hurt. I should mention that my credit card company yesterday sent me a notice that they were moving away from a fixed annual rate to a varying monthly interest rate that would be tied to a fixed number plus prime. This is the stuff you expect to see when people are worried about rampant inflation.

Welcome to a repeat of the Carter years!

Must have been a public “scohol” grad that did this…

You can’t make this up man. Watch that video…

Where are we headed?

You know America is heading in the wrong direction when the Germans figure out they need tax cuts to create economic growth, the one and only indisputable proven way to do it BTW, while in America, the nanny state where the WH regulates lighting, the new spending and taxes keep on piling on and are already seen as game changers for the 2010 elections. Seriously. Our economy is imploding, government is doing its best to make it keep heading south, people are losing work left and right, and Obama’s priority, well other than having government grab control of healthcare for everyone but democrats and politicians, is lighting efficiency standards?

WASHINGTON—Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy. “I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.

Obama said the new efficiency standards he was announcing for lamps would result in substantial savings between 2012 and 2042, saving consumers up to $4 billion annually, conserving enough energy to power every U.S. home for 10 months, reducing emissions equal to the amount produced by 166 million cars a year, and eliminating the need for as many as 14 coal-fired power plants.

Yeah, this sure makes me believe this is about stopping AGW. My bet is GE, or some other big democrat donor, has a new light bulb that nobody really wants and the WH is going to help them sell a lot of them. In return for a nice large donation, indirectly and well hidden, to the donkey’s campaign coffers, of course. This is not the first payback for services rendered, anyway. We Americans are now subsidizing “big and greedy” corporations, the ones democrats love to demonize but then cozy up with, and making them rich. All courtesy of that massive 1500 page bill, most of it still unwritten and definitely unread, that will stick US taxpayers with a $161 billion dollar annual tax hike, the largest single tax ever levied in our history, that was passed by the house, in the dark of night and by the hairs on Pelosi’s ugly mug, while the MSM had everyone focused on Michael Jackson’s freak death. Let’s hope the bill crashes and burns in the Senate. Today it’s California, a not too distant tomorrow considering where the collectivists are taking us, it will be the U.S. of A.

Monday, June 29, 2009

The Obama Healtchare plan promise

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Even if you consider that this was done for one of Trojan’s subsidiaries, the claim that half of America uses vibrators seems a bit farfetched. I certainly hope this study doesn’t include kids and that we are referring to adults that were part of the study. Apparently guys use these too, but mostly to help arouse their partners. Hopefully females. The going solo part however makes one wonder. One thing is certain: battery companies are doing brisk business.

No good deed goes unpunished?

Man, when I read this, I just was reminded of how crule life can sometimes be. Seriously, even when trying to do a good deed you can get hosed:

State police say 44-year-old Kevin Ryan, of Mount Kisco, was traveling on Route 23 in the town of Catskill, 30 miles south of Albany, around 10:45 p.m. Sunday when he noticed a vehicle overturned in the opposite lane. Investigators say Ryan stepped over a concrete barrier unaware there was a 17-foot wide gap between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the bridge. He fell nearly 50 feet to the rocks and concrete below. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

That just heinous. And the guy he was trying to go help?

Troopers say the driver of the other vehicle suffered minor injuries.

Just wow.

Getting paid for serivces rendered…

So we now find out that GE is making out like a bandit from the government rescue programs, even though they were not one of the original recipients.

General Electric, the world’s largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government’s key rescue programs for banks.  At the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial giants getting help from the government.

The company did not initially qualify for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.

And I hesitate to say so, but I believe that the reason GE isn’t facing the same restrictions that the other financial giants are, is because GE is a first rate democrat donor and already pushes many of the left’s agendas. In fact GE is a big believer in AGW and stands to make a major killing from the whole AGW scam through a vast array of services and equipment sales.

GE’s finance arm is not classified as a bank. Rather, it worked its way into the rescue program by owning two relatively small Utah banking institutions, illustrating how the loopholes in the U.S. regulatory system are manifest in the government’s historic intervention in the financial crisis.

The Obama administration now wants to close such loopholes as it works to overhaul the financial system. The plan would reaffirm and strengthen the wall between banking and commerce, forcing companies like GE to essentially choose one or the other.

Bleh, this is just smoke and mirrors. I am not falling for that crap. Remember that these are the same people that rushed through the stimulus bill without reading it and now also passed a massive “Cap and Tax” bill that is not even written yet, now saying they worry about GE! Obama’s people already showed they had very little regard for either the constitution or the rule of law with Chrysler and GM, anyway. If they really wanted to go after GE they would have. And my guess is that GE is not the only company making out ,and making out well, because of their close relationship with the political left. I guess corporate America is only evil when they don’t know which politicians’ campaign chest to keep full. Immelt and the rest of those good old boys don’t have to worry about their payday as long as the donkeys are in charge.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Scew me sideways!

Well we deserve what we get. It looks like that Cap and Tax bill that congress just passed, adding $161 billion dollars to what government now can waste, through the largest tax increase in American history, isn’t even written out yet! WTF??? Here is the entire text:

By all appearances, the House is about to vote on a very long bill of which it has no completed official copy. Texas Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Louie Gohmert have just asked the chair whether there exists a complete, updated copy of the Waxman-Markey carbon-cap bill. “If a bill for which there is no copy were to actually pass this body,” Barton asked, “could the bill without a copy be sent to the Senate for its consideration?”

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers’ amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk’s desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: “Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)...” How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill? Global Warming is apparently so urgent that we can’t even wait until members of Congress know what they’re voting on.

Did I already point out how crazy this stuff is? Can you imagine the outcry from the media and from the left if Bush had done something like this? This is not governing, this is shafting the American people before they can figure out they are being shafted. This is evil.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Congressman that wanted to investigate ACORN forced to give that up?

It looks like John Conyers, a powerful democrat congressman and House Judiciary Committee Chairman will be abandoning his plans to probe ACORN.

Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, earlier bucked his party leaders by calling for hearings on accusations the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style “protection” racket. “The powers that be decided against it,” Mr. Conyers told The Washington Times. The chairman declined to elaborate, shrugging off questions about who told him how to run his committee and give the Democrat-allied group a pass. Pittsburgh lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh, whose testimony about ACORN at a March 19 hearing on voting issues prompted Mr. Conyers to call for a probe, said she was perplexed by Mr. Conyers’ explanation for his change of heart.

It took a lot of balls for Conyers to come out and go after ACORN. This group of thugs & crooks are real well connected. They are directly responsible for some shady voting that helped elect Obama president. They have also been rewarded with billions of dollars of tax payer moneys for that effort. The list of seriously questionable things they are involved in is long. So I was impressed when Conyers, a democrat himself, came out in favor of investigating them. But, while I was worried some foul play might be involved, I felt perplexed by this turn around. A little research led me to find out that Conyers’’ wife, Monica Conyers, recently pled guilty to conspiracy charges and things came together immediately.

Oh sure, this could be a coincidence, but considering the pattern set where any media that gave the Obama people a hard time was banned and the shady IG firings, just to name a few retaliatory strikes that these people have taken, you will forgive me for suspecting a connection. One I am sure the MSM isn’t interested in pursuing or researching, I bet. This is one hell of a coincidence. Can you imagine the news cycle if something like this had happened during the Bush Admin years?

Beware the Cheetos…

Don’t take this story lightly. Cheetos are dangerous! One of my brothers in law once had to go to the doctor because his male member inexplicably had turned orange. After a battery of tests – blood & stool samples, coughing tests, prostate exams, X-Rays, MRIs, and some other less orthodox stuff – they found nothing wrong with the guy. Finally the doctor chose to ask him what had changed in his life. So my brother in law told him he got laid off about 6 weeks before. When prompted for details about daily activities he told the doctor that his days were spent watching porn and eating Cheetos… EVIL!

Cap and Tax, do or die…

As congress gets ready to rush through the biggest tax ever passed in America’s history - the hurry because congress can not afford more people to read their disastrous 1201 page bill, including their own members, for fear of the backlash - it needs to be point out that as we in America are heading for an economic disaster tied to this “Cap and Tax” bill, others are backing off.

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation. If you haven’t heard of this politician, it’s because he’s a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country’s carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N.—13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

There is a reason Al Gore shouted down the “deniers”. There is a reason congress needs to push through this abomination, in a hurry and in the middle of the night, too. Remember that practically nobody in congress has even read this damned behemoth yet! And the reason is the same: people are starting to get real science that disputes the “consensus science” crap that has been used by people like Gore and the people that want to have government take more of our income and control our lives, and this AGW thing looks less and less like science and more and more like a cult.

UPDATE: This monstrosity is now up to 1501 pages because Waxman added another 300 pages and only 3 hrs to debate these changes. Here are the details:

* The original bill, H.R. 2454, approximately 1,000 pages, was reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
* It was replaced this week by H.R. 2998, 1,201 pages, which will be voted on as an amendment in the form of a substitute.
* The Rules Committee, last night, released a committee report that includes a 300-page amendment to H.R. 2998. This 300-page amendment, the Waxman amendment (#121), is considered as adopted upon an affirmative vote for H.R. 2998, the amendment in the form of the substitute.

The description of what’s in the new amendment (#121) reads like a massive laundry list of special interest’s wish-lists, other such exemptions and goodies, and was likely added to make this sh*t sandwich palatable for some of the other democrats now on the opposite side. In the end though you can bet this went from a terrible idea to even worse than terrible.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Think they are done screwing us? Think again..

As if the disastrous and horribly costly healthcare reform bill Obama and the donkey are pushing through, reform that will absolutely and indubitably lead to the need of both massive new taxes and heavy gate keeping of services, all of which amounts to us citizens receiving far less and having to pony up a lot more, wasn’t bad enough, these nut jobs are also pushing for another reform bill that will impose the largest tax ever in America’s history. As this WSJ article aptly calls it, the “Cap and Tax” bill is a disastrous piece of collectivist policy intended to net the already bloated and overreaching government even more of our money and freedoms.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn’t take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others—manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won’t pinch wallets, behind the scenes they’ve acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

This bill, which started at 946 pages has now grown to a whopping 1201 pages, likely all pork and more government graft added by the collectivists. Again, like the patronage bill they claimed was a stimulus, which had to be passed ASAP if we wanted to prevent the US economy from imploding overnight, the new finance regulatory bill, which also must be approved yesterday, and the healthcare bill which Obama wants done immediately, this bill is also too urgent to actually be read and understood.

But Democratic leaders in the House say they’ll push for a vote on the bill as early as Friday. They think they can pass it. This is an incredibly expensive undertaking. If anyone in Congress tells you that he has read and completely understands this bill, and can explain exactly how the system to reduce carbon emissions would work and what its effects would be, he’s lying.

We all know how well the patronage bill has worked out for us. Unemployment, which they promised us would not pass 8% is now rapidly approaching 10%, and with no end in sight of how much higher it will go. Some project a whopping 12%. Several of our elected leaders also tried to hide their culpability in allowing their fellow legislators to add ridiculous and horrible legislation by later claiming they never read the damned thing! I have also already commented on how well the new finance and regulatory changes are likely to work considering that the same crooks that gave us the foundations for this crisis are now rewriting the rules. And that healthcare bill? An absolute disaster in the making.

So why the need to push another bill, one that purports to straddle us all with the largest tax increase in US history, through with such urgency and speed that most legislators, let alone we the people, can have a good look at it? I mean, these are the guys that promised to be transparent and forthright with the public, and allow us all to have a good look what they are doing, right? This sure doesn’t look like any of that. I mean how much confidence should we the people have in the crooks running congress when even their MSM allies report on this disaster with the headline: Will Congress read bills before voting?. WTF? Seriously.

I seriously hope that this thing dies a horrible death. It deserves nothing more. Whether it is because democrats jumped ship because they fear for their cushy jobs come the next election cycle, or whether the no vote was cast because the politician knows this bill is a disgrace and criminal, don’t matter much to me. Kill it. And kill it pronto, please!

The bill’s sponsors are still trying to resolve questions over whether and how to impose sanctions on countries that do not limit emissions. That’s crucial. Those foreign countries would enjoy a cost advantage in manufacturing if their industries were free to pollute, while American industries picked up the tab for controlling emissions.

Oh, I know, we let Obama sweet talk em like he has the Iranian mullahs......

Healthcare infomerical by ABC-WH bombs

I have to start off by admitting that I didn’t waste any of my valuable time watching that 3 hour ABC infomercial Obama put on yesterday, primarily because I figured it would be nothing but an infomercial and, as is usual with this WH and their staged events, likely to be devoid of real and important facts or much logic. So I do have to admit I was a bit surprised to find out that the thing was such an epic fail.

Call this a teachable moment, but even with ABC’s best-laid plans to kickstart the debate about health care reform and not allow the “Prescription for America” special to become an “infomercial,” as many have complained – the president spent more than twice as much time as his questioners vaguely answering or not answering the questions asked of him. But the network consistently presented the event as part of the need to fix a “broken system.” When asked, every one of the 164 hand-picked audience members said they felt that health care needed to be changed.

As predicted ABC did its best to push the agenda and this thing was nothing but an infomercial, even if they claim otherwise. Looks like they even stacked the audience with people that agreed with their agenda, intentionally or not. Maybe some agree there should be change, but I wonder how many would vehemently disagree with the current proposal. Anyway, maybe the ABC people and the WH knew this infomercial was going to backfire anyway, as the following suggests:

In addition to Obama’s longwinded responses, the ABC special left the most critical questions until the “Nightline” portion of the segment – after a 30-minute break for local news and likely fewer viewers.

One of the biggest points of contention opponents of government’s involvement in health care has been the threat that it would crowd out private health insurance providers by creating market forces they couldn’t compete with– or what Aetna Insurance president Ron Williams called it as part of the town hall: “introducing a new competitor that has rulemaking ability, the government would have.”

Of course, muddling your way through this thing while trying to, with a straight face I must add, lie about the fact that the ultimate effect, whether it is intended or not (and I say based on my experience with these collectivists that it is), is that this plan would undercut and eventually destroy the private industry plans – only stupid people believe and would argue that private insurers could compete with a plan or plans that government, which can and will subsidize their plan(s) with tax payer dollars provides while also having the luxury of being in charge of writing the rules of the game – and force us all into the government plan, was simply too difficult to do. ABC itself seems to have to accept that after Obama got asked what ABC calls “The problem Question”:

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get. The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

In short, Obama was stumped because of the very question I always say we need to ask any and all of these politicians that say they want to change healthcare: will you elites have the same plan(s) and limitations you intend to straddle us peasants with? The answer is always and indubitable “hell no!”. Also most people seem to somehow think we should be providing for the uninsured, but not if it will affect their coverage directly.

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent of Americans support creating a government-funded entity to offer health insurance to those who don’t get it elsewhere. But if that caused many private insurers to go out of business because they couldn’t compete, support plummets to 37 percent.

And, as I already pointed out, only fools think that the government plans would not only have an unfair advantage, but in the end, also a destructive effect on private insurers. And that was actually explained, very well I might add, by Ron Williams:

Sawyer asked Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna Insurance, “Is the president right that you need to be kept honest?” Williams said he disagreed with the notion of a public plan. “It’s difficult to compete against a player who’s also the person refereeing the game,” Williams said. He proposed working to “solve the problem as opposed to introduce a new competitor who has rule-making ability.”

The left knows this. They would prefer you and I however don’t. It’s the fundamental reason government efforts keep failing to muster enough support. Another doozie of a question was about who and how coasts would be controlled. Check this out:

Another neurologist, Dr. John Corboy of the University of Colorado Health Science Center, asked the president, “What can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health care system and if there are going to be limits, who’s going to design the system and who’s going to enforce the rules for a system like that?”

Obama, however, didn’t directly answer the question.

That’s because he knows the answer would turn off even the most ardent supporters. But the apt concerns about how the cost will be managed, and more importantly what this boondoggle will cost, are a huge, and currently nebulous, issue that we must not allow the politicians pushing for these government plans to avoid answering.

“We will have some up-front costs,” the president acknowledged. “And the estimates ... have been anywhere from a trillion to $2 trillion. But what I have said is whatever it is we do, we pay for.” The president criticized the Congressional Budget Office, which recently analyzed the cost of two Democratic Senate draft bills as costing between $1 and $1.6 trillion.

The president said the CBO “doesn’t count all of the savings that may come from prevention, may come from eliminating all of the paperwork and bureaucracy because we have put forward health IT. It doesn’t come from the evidence-based care and changes in reimbursement ... they’re not willing to credit us with those savings. They say, ‘That may be nice, that may save a lot of money, but we can’t be certain.’

Those savings are all mythical as others already have pointed out. A whole new slew of taxes and some massive spending on things like IT upgrades nobody in IT thinks will actually yield any cost cuts, are not cost reductions. In fact, and if anything, we all will pay more for our care anyway:

One option being considered on Capitol Hill is taxing health care benefits, which are currently tax exempt. Today, a key Democratic senator indicated that may be inevitable. “It is hard for me to see how you have a package that is paid for that doesn’t include reducing the tax subsidy for health care,” said Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who is regarded among Democrats as something of a deficit hawk.

Basically we are going to get slammed both ways. We will pay more for our own plans, well, as long as they continue to be able to compete with the government offerings which will be subsidized with even more of our tax dollars and have the benefit of belonging to the people making the rules. And we will have to pay more elsewhere too, because in the end this stuff will cost trillions more than they are predicting. That’s been a given constant of every single government social program.

Anyway, these are some real big stumbling blocks to overcome. And it shows:

With the health care debate ramping up, with Republicans assailing Democrats for the high price tag and a public option plan, Obama’s ratings on the subject slipped slightly in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Only 53 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of health care while 39 percent disapprove of it, up from 29 percent who disapproved in April, according to the poll.

I expect these numbers to plummet, and plummet fast, as more and more people realize the details and consequences of this stuff. It is obvious that most of those that believe we need to be extending healthcare to the uninsured are motivated by emotion. That emotional need vanishes fast when the consequences and costs are articulated.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

I told you so…

A little more than a week ago I had a post dealing with the left’s new plan to regulate the financial industry. As I pointed out then, I saw this as a massive disaster. First off, this new plan did not address the underlying issues that led to our economic crisis. But even worse, it put the same politicians and ideology that created the bad policies and then fostered the bad practices which gave us this economic implosion we are in, back in charge of things. I then made the case that in the end the problem was government meddling, and that even more government meddling was just going to give us more of the same. As long as the fundamental concept, that government could actually meddle with the market in order to promote the practice of irresponsible people, the types that make bad decisions regularly, owning homes, we would sooner or later be back were we are today. Not everyone agreed:

Here’s where our main disagreement lies. You seem to me to believe that any program to make low income housing available is wrong. You seem to think ANY government “meddling” in housing is in itself a bad thing. Tell that to your grandfather who bought his first home on the GI bill.

Well guess what? It looks like the primary architect of the first crisis, the gate keeper for the organization that not only made it possible for bad and risky people to get loans, but then packaged the loans and created a security trading market, none other than Barney Franks, is asking for more of the same.

Reuters) - Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said. In March, Fannie Mae (FNM.N)(FNM.P) said it would no longer guarantee mortgages on condos in buildings where fewer than 70 percent of the units have been sold, up from 51 percent, the paper said. Freddie Mac (FRE.P)(FRE.N) is due to implement similar policies next month, the paper said. In a letter to the CEO’s of both companies, Representatives Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner warned that a 70 percent sales threshold “may be too onerous” and could lead condo buyers to shun new developments, according to the paper.

And we are not even a couple of months into the government scheme to fix what they claim was the damned capitalist deregulation that created the crisis that Frank’s masterful ideological manipulation of the market helped create! Everyone agrees that we are hurting, and hurting bad. In the mean time the news is rigged to allow the collectivists to give us even more bad policy. And the dollar is getting hammered. And things are so bad that hookers now are taking chips in trade for services! OK, that was just a bad joke, but the rest unfortunately is not. Basically we are seeing the same architects of our current crisis asking to be allowed to “fix things. I guess we should trust these guys to make it better this time around… By doing more of the same!

Anyway, I guess Chris Dodd, embattled and looking like he will go down in flames in the next elections because even the MSM cronies have given up on trying to cover up the massive corruption surrounding him, was too busy to also join in on this. Doesn’t matter however, because everything’s in good hands! In the mean time they are adding tax after tax, causing one company after another to close down, and basically making things worse. Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Oh no you don’t!

I think we sane people need to get ahead of the latest liberal myth – another rewrite of history – and squash it fast. What myth am I talking about? Well the one that the libs and the WH are now touting, after they horribly bungled and totally mangled their response to the current revolution in Iran. The left is already claiming that the revolution in Iran is either indirectly, and very likely, directly tied to Obama and his election. The meme, as a couple of libs I heard spreading this dastardly cover-up are preaching, is that Obama’s election was but 6 months ago and we are already seeing more resistance in Iran than ever in the past 30 years. When asked for clarification the roundabout explanation was that the election of Obama and his new direction for the US made the Iranians decide it was time for a change. Obama performs another miracle!

Of course I pointed out the sheer stupidity of this kind of thinking. The left actually wants to make people believe that we have the Iranian people risking their lives and standing up against their brutal dictators because after 8 years of that warmongering criminal Bush talking about “destroying” Iran, Obama now talks peace. Let me break this down for you so you can see how stupid this sounds. The mullahs tell the world they are building a bomb and plan to use it (on Israel and then the great Satan). The US, nay the world, tells them to rethink that. Sanctions and much useless talking follow, as the Iranian leadership hunkers down, ignores the impact on their people of the sanctions, and push on with their plans to go nuclear. In the mean time Iran’s two neighbors are cleaned up, and the Iranian people get to watch both the Iraqis and the Afghanis democratically elect their leaders, because of evil warmongering Bush-McHitler. While this is going on, the thugs in charge of Iran refuse to change course, putting the Iranian people at risk of a massive strike campaign, or even a possible nuclear retaliatory strike, because of their pursuit of the bomb. Yet, the Iranian people, at serious risk, never fear for their lives, and revolt. Now some guy, Obama for you true believers, gets elected to the presidency of the US – the one country that has stood in opposition of the thugocracy that practically all of the Iranian people have despised and wanted to get rid off for over a decade - and that new guy wants to cozy up to the brutal and evil thugs holding them prisoner. Mend things. Chat without conditions. Be friends! Peace and all that jazz. And suddenly the Iranian people decide that they need to risk their lives to get rid of the thugs!  Are these leftists living in the real world or the Twilight Zone?

See, if you want to link what is happening in Iran to Obama, the real and logical flow of things would indicate a much different chain of events. More likely, what has really happened is that the Iranian people have realized the current US president was going to establish and normalize relations with the monsters running their country, legitimizing the regime in the process, and make it even harder for them to get out from under its oppressive yoke. Thus the Iranian people decided to act before that took place. Once the US had legitimized the thugs in charge, getting rid of them would be that much harder. The Iranian people will remember that the WH’s response to their uprising was to try and play nice with the mullahs, and not to condemn them. Even after a brutal show of indiscriminate force. I guess this is the second democrat to seriously screw things up when it comes to Iran. No wonder that the people that really get what Obama is doing are now saying that he is making Jimmy Carter look wise. No wonder the that the left feels the need to rewrite history.