Archive for May, 2009
“The mess that Obama inherited”
Friday, May 8th, 2009That is the mantra of the Left. Over and over and over broken record style they say it droning like the mindless borg they are. Yep, Republicans who once could be counted on to be fiscally responsible turned out to be big, greedy, disgusting hogs when they were in power.
And now, President Barack Obama is making them look like restrained piglets in comparison. Here’s a picture that explains it.
The Leftists can cram it. Obama’s spending is FIVE TIMES what the worst Republican Congress could come up with and the promised future spending cuts would only bring the spending to the levels of 2x times the worst Republican’s budget. So you guys on the Left can shut the hell up about the mess you inherited. You’re making this current mess. You own it. And it WILL be hung, like a noose, around your special-interest paying off, job-losing necks. You. Own. It.
Speaking of the mess..what is a sane person to do with any extra money he has? What is wisdom? The stock market still looks like a bad idea [read the whole thing, this piece is really, really good]:
So Barack Obama’s policies are antithetical to investment, antithetical to sound business planning, and ensured to kneecap any attempt at recovery that our economy hopes for. If you’re looking for reasons to worry about the future of this economy — looking for justification that this is not a recovery and a bear market rally — you simply have to combine a few facts:
1. Fundamentally, the bull market of the late 90’s and early 00’s was partly due to an extraordinary increase in financial system leverage.
2. This bull market was pumped up by fractional reserve banking and a completely unsustainable rise in asset prices that fueled the above leverage.
3. We are now at a point where leverage is unwinding and asset prices are still declining.
4. Government props have supported a rise in financial sector stocks, but fundamentally the stress tests prove that banks need to raise capital based on even mild financial shocks.
5. Any continued weakness in the economy will skewer this current rally.
6. Asset prices, foreclosures, and jobs data show no signs of getting better, only (at best) signs of slowing their decline.
7. Obama’s financial system meddling (auto bailout, TARP shenanigans, etc) is sure to provide more weakness than expected.Richard Posner, and all the other cheerleaders, believe that if only they keep confidence high, all the fundamental problems in the economy will dissipate and we’ll start a recovery. But the fundamentals aren’t going away. The economy is over-leveraged just like it was in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, and that leverage must unwind before we can reach a recovery, a recovery based on saving and investment rather than spending and debt. Posner thinks the collapse has been avoided by slowing down the decline, but in essence we’ve only delayed and extended the inevitable.
I’m thinking, ironically enough, that real estate is the good investment right now. What do you think? Low property values, low interest rates, tangible asset.
Did Army Bureaucracy Force Enhanced Interrogation?
Thursday, May 7th, 2009What if there’s a better interrogation method that the Army wouldn’t authorize to keep an old purveyor of outdated technology happy resulting in the use of questionable interrogation methods like waterboarding? To be clear: What if the Army still officially authorizes polygraph testing to use during interrogations when it is less effective, more invasive and puts soldiers in harms way, when the more up-to-date and remarkably effective voice stress recognition system detects liars better and saves lives? And better yet, what if the new technology negates the need for a method like waterboarding–which users say it does just that?
Investigative blogger Bob McCartey asserts exactly that in his must-read article titled, “If Not for Memo, Torture Might Not Be An Issue“:
The question of whether members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities should be allowed to use waterboarding and other forms of torture during interrogations might be largely irrelevant today if not for a memo signed by Under Secretary of Defense James R. Clapper Jr. Oct. 29, 2007.
On that day, Clapper issued a memo granting “Operational Approval of the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System (PCASS)” and designating the polygraph and its cousin, the PCASS, as the “only approved credibility assessment technologies” in the Department of Defense.
This outdated tech, not admissible in courts because of unreliability was the “official” tech by the DOD, when soldiers on the ground use and rely upon this:
One of the technologies that has proven itself more worthy, according to Jim Kane, executive director of the National Institute for Truth Verification in West Palm Beach, Fla., is the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer® developed by his company more than two decades ago and refined several times since.
It was the success of CVSA® technology in Iraq and Afghanistan that Kane says led DoD to create the PCASS system.
“They needed something to issue to troops in the field who used the CVSA and whose commanders — including some general officers — supported the CVSA,” the veteran with more than 30 years of diverse intelligence experience explained before adding that PCASS was never tested for countermeasures before it was deployed to troops in the field.
“The demand for our system was so great that the DoD polygraphers had to take some action or they would have been put out of business by the CVSA,” he continued. “Their resistance to CVSA is doing great damage to our national security by keeping it from the war fighters who need it the most.”
Please go read the whole thing. Turf protection shouldn’t be the reason solid methods are discarded thus forcing methods that work but are questionable.
Frolicking Through The Leftist Hypocrisy Flowers
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009Remember when the Democrats loved the children?
Remember when peace activists decried the bombing of innocent civilians?
Remember when the press cared about sex scandals? A lot?
Remember when a President’s Wife was out of touch?
Remember when car companies were evil?
Remember when the mantra was “my body my choice“?
Just feeling a wee bit nostalgic today and thought you might be, too.
Treatise On Kind Capitalism & Scary Socialism
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009Yesterday, I had the honor to be on the same editorial page as Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft over at America Issues Project. Jim has been my blog hero since the beginning along with The Anchoress, so it was quite an honor. He’s talking about the big, fat liar, Al Gore. Kinda like when a rookie basketball player gets drafted onto a team which starts his hero. That was me yesterday.
It was the first day for AIP’s site and to introduce myself to that audience, I talked about how the perspective on socialism and capitalism is exactly backwards these days. Here’s a snippet of it:
The other axiom of socialism, the first being “I care,” is the inverse of this: “You don’t care.” Socialism depends on believing that people are fundamentally incapable of taking care of themselves. It’s a dark theory, really. A socialist views his neighbor with contempt believing that the neighbor needs to do things the “right” way. A socialist views his neighbor with suspicion and is convinced that his neighbor must be forced to do the correct thing because he won’t do the right thing on his own.
So please go over and read it. The AIP site is beautiful and easy to navigate and full of good stuff.
President Obama’s Mission To Bankrupt Coal Plants Begins
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009What’s going on at the EPA? Obama business as usual, that’s what. Obama business in service to the wacko environmentalists. From Pierre LeGrand:
On April 28th Obama fulfilled a campaign promise regarding bankrupting Coal Power plants. He accomplished this by having his EPA pull a permit that had already been issued for the Desert Rock Energy Facility. Well that’s not all the EPA is pulling retroactively! They also pulled the flattering report they themselves wrote regarding the very same facility.
Take a look at these two screenshots of this report regarding that very same powerplant. Sounds like the EPA was all for it until Obama wasn’t and then poof the EPA made the report go away. Thank you Google Cache!
On April 28th Obama fulfilled a campaign promise regarding bankrupting Coal Power plants. He accomplished this by having his EPA pull a permit that had already been issued for the Desert Rock Energy Facility. Well that’s not all the EPA is pulling retroactively! They also pulled the flattering report they themselves wrote regarding the very same facility.
Take a look at these two screenshots of this report regarding that very same powerplant. Sounds like the EPA was all for it until Obama wasn’t and then poof the EPA made the report go away. Thank you Google Cache!
Obviously some serious money was lost since the permit was already issued but hey the Power Company probably wasn’t a big enough contributor to the various extortionists/national politicians we seem to have running all over the place. Change you can believe in!
Pierre says, “Gee it is almost like the EPA and Obama don’t want you to know that they are pissing away perfectly good energy sources to placate the far loony left environmentalists.”
President Obama is dismantling rational, independent energy policy one decision at a time.
Who Owns The Republican Brand? Not Republicans.
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009It’s not Republicans. And it’s not Rush Limbaugh–much as Obama, his minions and the press would like to paint it so.
I’ve got bad news: The opposition owns the Republican brand. Oh yes, they do. Democrats define Republicans and the Republicans accept the definition by operating from their false premises.
How do I know Republicans are owned by the Left? Because the Republican message is consistently negative and defensive: “I’m not mean.” ” We don’t believe that.” “I’m not extremist like them“. And by them, Republicans are defining themselves against the press-Obama-grassroots caricature of Republicans. In doing so, the Republicans with a national voice diminish their own party.
Lorie Byrd notes the same phenomenon in her aptly titled The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Republicans“
In a recent conference call, the RNC’s new media director Todd Herman said the Republican party does not own the Republican brand – Jon Stewart does, among others. He is absolutely right. Little the Republican Party, or conservatives, have done lately seems to have made much of a difference in that image problem. They are not setting the narrative. Their opponents on the Left, and those in the liberal media are doing it, and with great success.
Those much younger than I am may believe that if we just behave more like Ronald Reagan, the good natured optimist, then the world will see that we are really nice people with good intentions. What they fail to realize, and what those who lived through the Reagan years know, is that during his administration he was often demonized by those in the media and the opposing party. He was painted by his opponents as a dim witted war monger who wanted as many people as possible to be homeless and die of AIDS. But Reagan was beloved by the majority of the American people because he was able to talk past (and above) the media to speak to them directly.
In order to reclaim the Republican brand, the DC bubble people–the Congressmen and Senators, the Republican party leadership, the donors, Think Tanks, and the often parasitic consultants–need to speak the language of middle America and learn and accept the premise that Americans and conservatives are good, decent, hard-working normal, diverse people. It is possible to be diverse and conservative. In fact, that IS the face of the modern Republican party. So the insiders need to stop buying the distorted image presented by DC media elites, leftist nutroots and Democrats themselves.
Right Doctor on Radio For Conservatives
Monday, May 4th, 2009Hi Guys!
Tonight is the inaugural episode of my new radio show called Right Doctor for Radio For Conservatives. Listen at RFCradio.com at 10 EST or 9 CST.
There is also a chat room. I’d love your feedback! I’ll be there, please join in the conversation.
Also, in the second half of the hour (hour long show), I interview John about what he means when he says he thinks the Right should get dirty like the Left. Lots of good stuff!
Hope you’ll join me every Monday and Wednesday night at 10 Eastern for one hour….on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Tabitha Hale of Pink Elephant Pundit and Smart Girl politics will have a show. And on Fridays, Emily Zanotti will do an Indie music show in that time slot. After us, from 11-midnight is the Comedian and awesome host Stephen Kruiser of America Needs Me.
Dodd Likens Bush Administration To Nazis
Monday, May 4th, 2009Just. Wow.
Are you kidding me? Water boarding is the same as incinerating 6 million Jews and being responsible for 55 million lives lost. Really?
Well, I’ll say this for the Democrats, they know how to pander to their base even when in office.
What If The Economy Recovers Sooner Than Convenient?–UPDATED
Monday, May 4th, 2009For the second straight month, home sales have increased:
There was another ray of hope Monday for the distressed housing market: the National Association of Realtors said the volume of signed contracts to buy previously occupied homes rose for the second month in a row.
Homebuyers taking advantage of bargain prices, low interest rates and a tax credit for first-time buyers pushed the seasonally adjusted index of pending sales up by 3.2 percent to 84.6 in March.
What if the economy is recovering? What if it all happens before the gazillions of dollars Obama is spending happens.
John Fund told me to expect inflation 18 months from now. When the natural capitalistic cycle is monkeyed with the pendulum swings too far the other direction. That’s what I fear happening in the next two years.
UPDATED: Related thoughts from Lorie Byrd.
Cross-posted at href=”http://rightwingnews.com”>RightWingNews
Anyone But Specter
Monday, May 4th, 2009Arlen Specter the new Flavor of the Month on the Sunday talk circuit demonstrated why he’s come back to his ideological home in the Democrat party. On Meet the Press, he said:
“If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”
Nice. As Moe Lane of Redstate says, Specter desecrated his “friend’s” memory. Glad to have him with the other Democrat exploiters.
Bad news, though. The establishment wins, yet again, either way in Pennsylvania:
A new poll of Pennsylvania voters suggests that the newest Democrat in Congress, Sen. Arlen Specter, would easily beat his old rival, Republican Pat Toomey, in Specter’s battle for re-election next year.
But the Quinnipiac University survey, released Monday, indicates that Specter would have a much tougher re-election fight on his hands if he faces
off in 2010 against former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.
At this point, though, I don’t care who wins in Pennsylvania as long as it’s not Arlen Specter. I want him consigned to the same fate as Tom Daschle. How to make that happen is another story.
