Friday, May 7, 2010
great article.
"Being questioned about your immigration status for a few minutes is inconvenient. Not getting a job you deserve because of your skin color is life-changing."
liberals trying to pay the tea party movement as racist
what do liberals do when they're losing the debate on policy? play the race card. another hack strategy in the left's playbook. the mainstream media, which has been in the back pocket of the Democratic party since watergate, has tried soo hard to portray the tea party as racist and violent. why? because they are SCARED of the tea party. bank on it.
"Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that the Tea Party movement is "struggling to overcome accusations of racism," some of which has been perpetuated on The Washington Post's own opinion pages. Yesterday's New York Times, home to the most obsessively anti-Tea Party editorial page in America, was stunned to discover that "at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials."
Previously, The Times reported that Tea Partiers are, on average, people with a high levels of education and higher than average incomes. So it would seem that they aren't, as some editorialists and pundits contend, simply a gang of subliterate militia men or, as actress Janeane Garofalo recently told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, a subsection of the white power movement."
http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/06/now-playing-at-reasontv-is-the
watch what obama does, not what he says
"Part of the reason for the intense dislike of this president by some on the right is their belief that he used a longing among the public for civil discourse to get elected, but then abandoned that laudable goal in pursuit of arguably (definitely) the most radical left agenda in U.S. history.
The president talks a great game about civility, the corrosive language of politics and the self-absorbed media that promotes conflict. But Obama's policies, behavior and the people in his administration suggest he isn't serious. Many in his administration are radical leftists.
Don't take my word. Perform a Google search by typing "Obama's radical czars." Read their backgrounds. Van Jones, Obama's former "green czar," was an admitted communist. Mark Lloyd, the president's "diversity czar" at the Federal Communications Commission, admires Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez."
unemployment rises to 9.9%
RNC: As Unemployment Rises, White House Waves White Flag On Creating Jobs While Pushing Job-Killing, European-Style Agenda
Thursday, May 6, 2010
soldier-citizens for congress?
"Usually, a handful of ex-soldiers seek political office every election cycle. But well over 20 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are running this fall for Congress alone. Almost all are riding a wave of public anger at incumbents over a profligate government and a dishonest Wall Street — and a general feeling that the current Democratic remedy has proven as bad as, or worse than, the recent Republican disease."
senator: US taxpayers are helping finance Greek bailout
"The International Monetary Fund board has approved a $40 billion bailout for Greece, almost one year after the Senate rejected my amendment to prohibit the IMF from using U.S. taxpayer money to bailout foreign countries."
CEOs are sending california a message
"Recent polls show Californians in a deep funk over the state's prospects. A new study of corporate leaders in Chief Executive magazine shows why. Asked to rank states by business climate, CEOs put California DEAD LAST. Texas was No. 1.
California's long-term job losses are downright ugly. Since 2001, while politicians dither and spend, 634,000 factory jobs have disappeared along with 34% of the industrial base. From 2003 to 2007 alone, according to the Milken report, 79,000 jobs were lost due to excessive regulation and too-high taxes.
But if California's private companies are suffering, its public sector sure isn't. From 2001 to 2009, California lost 235,000 net private-sector jobs, but gained 163,700 government jobs. Those cushy union jobs also pay more than comparable private jobs and provide gold-plated benefits. Now Californians find they actually have to pay for this foolishness."
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532309
the plight of libertarian voters
"Socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters believe, especially after what happened with health care, that they have no clear choice: They must sign on with the religious right or the economic left. Libertarians are often torn between their aversions to the Republicans’ social conservatism and the Democrats’ fiscal irresponsibility."
Greek debt crisis offers preview of what awaits the USA
"Before Americans get too smug, however, they should note the obvious: Debt is debt. If too much Greek borrowing can send world financial markets into turmoil like that of the past couple of days, imagine the damage a U.S. debt crisis would inflict.
These numbers should come as a shock. But in Washington, there appear to be two acceptable responses — denial and finger-pointing.
Many Democrats cling to the fatuous and deceitful argument that commission members should keep their hands off Medicare and Social Security, which is tantamount to saying they should do nothing. Those two programs alone consume one-third of federal spending and constitute the vast bulk of the long-term debt problem.
At the same time, many Republicans— including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who had previously championed the commission approach— voted against the panel because they fear it will propose tax increases as a necessary piece of any solution.
Unless this type of petty behavior ends soon, and there are few indications that it will, the economic tragedy in Athens will simply be an out-of-town tryout for the show headed for Washington."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-05-06-editorial06_ST_N.htm
a spend-and-borrow debt mess
"And just like Greece, U.S. government union-worker benefits, which run 50 percent above private-sector equivalents, are bankrupting federal, state and local budgets. They're also spawning a massive voter revolt against big-government debt that will bear fruit this November in the tea-party midterm elections."
finding out what's in the healthcare bill
"In pressing for passage of the Democrats’ massive and unpopular health-care bill earlier this spring, Nancy Pelosi made the unorthodox argument that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” Her assumption, it seemed, was that the fog was created by opponents of the bill, and that people would like what they found out after it passed. But things have not been turning out that way as we have in fact been finding out more and more about what’s in it. Every new wrinkle (and there have been lots in just the month since the bill became law) has seemed only to further darken the picture."
the politics of evasion
"I’m not saying this to single out the Brits, because the politics of evasion has infected almost all western societies, including our own. Just about everyone knows that the U.S. government will have to turn toward fiscal restraint, for the simple reason that we can’t keep borrowing a trillion dollars a year (and turning over a total of five trillion a year in public debt) without incurring burdensome interest payments and running grave risks. But almost no one running for office is talking about this challenge in more than vague generalities."
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
good read.
"We want limited government -- and we should want limited government -- because more government means less liberty. But even the most manifest modern versions of vile malice, like Hitler's Third Reich or Stalin's empire, were not so much sins of "statism" as sins of "partyism." Nazis and Bolsheviks saw government as a hand puppet of the Party. In 1942, enemies of Nazism were writing of the "Nazi system, with its .. .absolute claim to the precedence of the Party over the whole State." The very term "Nazi" refers to a party, not a government.
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and our other great founders grasped this. They constructed in our system of government safeguards for little states against big states, separation of legislation and execution of laws, sovereign states to limit the federal government, and so on. Without party trumping government, "checks and balances," "separation of powers," and "federalism" are self-correcting mechanisms. The toxin the founders dreaded was "factions."
We saw this dysfunction during the health care debate. The legislative branch adopted, without reading or understanding it, a massive bill that Obama wanted. State governments, whose interests lay in opposing this federal power grab, instead responded to ObamaCare along predictably partisan lines. Six of twenty-six Democrat governors, all from conservative states, voiced concerns about ObamaCare. Nearly all Republican governors -- Arnold being an exception -- opposed ObamaCare. Democrat state attorneys general were much more reluctant to file lawsuits against ObamaCare than their Republican counterparts. It is party driving the state, and not the other way around.
The left is an interest group movement, just like the Nazis and just like the Bolsheviks. It embraces Nazi themes like "social justice" -- consigning whites, males, Christians, the affluent, patriots, and others into a leftist-patrolled ghetto. The KKK also supported "social justice" -- so did Father Coughlin, Juan Perón, Fidel Castro, and all those sibling interest-group parties or movements. The state can be used by these odious types, but it is the social justice thugs, not the state per se, which are the problem. In the current immigration firefight, what do conservatives want? More government! We want the federal government to rigorously enforce the law. The left wants the state to vanish and our borders to become meaningless.
This sort of bigotry against certain citizens in favor of others is so common now that we forget that the prostitution of government to the needs of only some Americans is the opposite of what Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin wished to leave us. Whatever structure of government is bequeathed to a people, political parties which champion particular interests will, inevitably, destroy the worth of that structure. Interest-group parties are poison to ordered liberty.
Nominal parties -- Republicans, Democrats, Federalists, etc. -- can also be corrupted. While certain parties, like the Democrats today, seem to be in the belly of the beast that is interest-driven government, certainly Republicans like McCain and Crist can be just as debased. That is why the Tea Party resonates so well. Far from championing any particular factions of America like Obama, who plans to reinvigorate his party by enthusing the young, African-Americans, Latinos, and women (see video below), the Tea Party champions simply ordered liberty."
a sense of how screwed america is financially
(continued from the post below)
When we add the national debt and entitlements together, we get a figure of some $117 trillion. This figure represents the amount of money the federal government will have to come up with in the years ahead in order to discharge its obligations.
The sheer magnitude of this number makes it difficult to grasp. To give a sense of scale, it is about twice the current economic output of the whole world. It is also more than eight times the size of the American economy. With today's tax revenues it would take more than fifty-five years to pay for these obligations. This assumes there is no interest on the debt and that the federal government spends no money on anything else.
There is only one conclusion that reasonably can be drawn on the basis of these figures: The American federal government is simply not in the position to make good on its obligations."
the dollar's inevitable demise
"Consider these figures. The current size of the American economy is roughly $14 trillion. As of this writing, the federal government's total public debt stands at nearly $13 trillion.
In its first midsession review, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimated that at the end of 2010, the national debt will breach the $14-trillion mark. This means that America's sovereign debt will be soon equal to the annual output of our economy. In other words, our national debt will shortly reach 100 percent of GDP. History and experience show that most governments that assume such levels of debt are ultimately not able to contain them. In most cases, this kind of situation eventually leads to the disintegration of the country's monetary regime and the collapse of its currency."
video: the end of the world
marc steyn, who i link to frequently on Paulitics for his sheer brilliance, wrote a book called "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It." It's a nyt bestseller and all that jazz. in the first part of this interview series about the book, Mark Steyn breaks down the numbers and explains why they spell doom for the Western world. this is fascinating. i reccomend watching the entire thing when you have time.
republicans in resurgence.
'This year’s electorate leans to the right, with most independents seeing eye to eye with Republicans.'
"Fifty-three percent of independents join 89 percent of Republicans in opposing “the health care reform plan that Congress passed recently.” Much of that opposition is intense: 42 percent of independents and 81 percent of Republicans called themselves “strongly opposed.” Voters expect the legislation to raise taxes, premiums, and the deficit; a plurality also expects it to reduce the quality of care. Given three options — leave the legislation in place, amend and modify it, or replace and repeal it — voters split 22–37–35.
On some emerging economic issues, however, a conservative consensus includes a plurality of Democrats. Asked whether they think it is good or bad that federal pay exceeds private-sector pay, 62 percent of voters said it was a bad thing and only 19 percent a good one. A new value-added tax
was unpopular across the board: Voters panned it by a 67–21 percent margin, with only 31 percent of Democrats approving.
Democrats revert to being out-of-step on some national-security issues. While voters, by a five-point margin, think that Obama has improved the country’s standing in the world, voters by large margins want to keep Guantanamo Bay open (60–32) and favor military tribunals for trying terrorists (56–36)."
90 seats.
"Once you add up the upcoming special elections, the open-seat races, and the races where there’s some indicator of trouble for a Democratic opponent — a particularly strong challenger, favorable district demographics, surprising fundraising numbers, a particularly weak Democratic incumbent, or a combination of these factors — you come up with more than 90 House races. If the GOP wins only half the seats listed below, they win back the House."
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