Posts
The only thing we can do besides stew is our God-given right...Writing and calling! Every Republican/Conservative needs to step up. NOW! The ONLY way we can defeat this rediculous stimulus that only destroys our childrens future is to write or call them and tell them they WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED if they vote for this crap on the final vote!
TWO Senators from Maine indicated a vote for this bill and Pennsylvania's own Arlen "Don't turn your back on him" Specter.
I'm writing and calling to let his office know that this is a disgrace! Only if as many of us as possible do the same do we have a chance, however slim, to try to save America as we know it for our kids. That SHOULD matter to all of you!
Here is the info you need to contact these three sell-outs:
Specter, Arlen - (R - PA)
Class III
711 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4254
Web Form: specter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Co...
Collins, Susan M. - (R - ME)
Class II
413 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2523
Web Form: collins.senate.gov/public/continue.cfm?FuseAction=Contact...
Snowe, Olympia J. - (R - ME)
Class I
154 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5344
Web Form: snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactSenat...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Sold out once again! (click for article)
Can we fire a senator from the party? I mean, they benefit from having an "R" after their name, they benefit from my party support and they continue to stab us in the back. I'm talking about RINOs. In case you don't know it, Republicans, one of your PA "Republican" Senators just said "F--- You America!" Said I am going to sell out the ideals and sacrifices of EVERYONE here or gone that have worked to keep freedom and individuality and smaller government infringement a part of our daily lives. He sold out our kids. I am sick. Sick to my stomach. Thank you Arlan Specter. Thank you for being a d---bag! (Pardon my dwindling free speech)
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In the Valley of Elephants, RINOs Are King Posted by Chuck MuthFebruary 9, 2009 at 1:25 pm
>> Printer-Friendly Version
Talk about pulling the rug out from under you. Talk about sucking the air out of your balloon. Talk about killing a rally. Talk about “Republican” U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
Congressional Republicans got their keisters kicked at the ballot box last November. They were depressed. Lethargic. Apathetic. There wasn’t enough Xanax, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Prozac and Paxil combined in the Capitol to service everybody. Heck, they almost had to start re-importing some from Canada just to handle the demand.
Then Obama was sworn in and the floodgates of spending on every Democrat pet program under the sun – including contraceptives and sod – were opened. Bingo! A “trillion dollar turkey” spending bill disguised as a catastrophe-avoiding “stimulus” bill.
And then suddenly…Republicans in the House of Representatives re-discovered fiscal conservatism. I mean, it was like the Grinch suddenly discovering that Christmas had nothing to do with spending money on gifts and presents and earmarks and bridges to nowhere.
“Being Republican," they thought, "doesn't come from a store. Being Republican, perhaps, means a little bit more! And what happened then? Well, in Washington they say, The GOP's small spine, Grew three sizes that day!”
House Republicans knew they didn’t have the votes to stop the Obama Spending Express. But that wasn’t their challenge. Their challenge was to see if they could all band together and vote unanimously against the “trillion dollar turkey” – the way Republicans banded together and unanimously embraced the Contract With America way back in ’94.
And they did.
I don’t know how they ever pulled it off, but it was a thing of beauty. It drove the Democrats and the mainstream media cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. How could Republicans stand united on principle and in opposition to the great and powerful Obamessiah? HOW DARE THEY?!!
But they did. Not only was it the right vote to cast from a public policy standpoint; it was the right vote politically, as well. It was a mega-shot of adrenaline in the arm of GOP grassroots activists and party leaders. I know. I was at the Republican National Committee meeting in Washington the week of that vote and it was the talk of the town. Happy days were here again!
“Can you believe the Republicans actually stood united? Maybe there’s hope for us after all!”
But then…the issue went over to the Senate.
Unlike in the House, if Senate Republicans were to stand united in opposition to this bloated, larded-up spending bill - they could actually STOP it. Because unlike in the House, the 41 Republican senators could filibuster this bill. And, oh, what a political blow that would be to Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi - in addition to doing what’s right for the country!
Alas, three “moderate” Republicans on Friday turned this lemonade into a lemon. It was like being first-and-goal from the two-yard line in the Super Bowl and throwing an interception which gets run back 100 yards for a touchdown by the opposing team – not that that would ever happen.
Specter, Collins and Snowe sold out their 38 GOP colleagues and every Republican member of the House by cutting a deal and giving the Democrats’ the 60 votes they needed for this “trillion dollar turkey” to go through. In doing so, they not only assured the socialist-Democrats now running the country a huge and expensive political and legislative victory, but they stopped dead in its tracks the momentum Republicans had been successfully building with the American people against this proposal.
Why, oh why, did we ever stop the practice of tar-and-feathering?
Folks, this was nothing short of giving aid-and-comfort to the opposition. And these three “Republicans In Name Only” (RINOs) have done this sort of thing over and over and over again for many, many years. But this was a big one. Huge. When will the party finally say “enough is enough”? Why is the GOP allowing a handful of RINOs to control the party’s direction and future?
Yes, I fully understand the political reality that majorities get to lead - and you gain majorities by addition, not subtraction. But what about all of the fiscally conservative voters the GOP is losing thanks to RINOs like Specter, Collins and Snowe undermining the party’s message and ruining the “brand”?
It’s a painful dilemma to be sure. So the question naturally arises, “What would Ronald Reagan do?” Fortunately, we have his CPAC speech from 1975 to guide us:
“A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers. . . . And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.”
If these three RINOs want to be independent, throw their Republican colleagues under the bus, and vote however they want - even on bills as contradictory to the fundamental principles of the GOP as this BS “stimulus” bill – then they should go their own way and run for election as independents, not Republicans.
Why should these RINOs benefit at the ballot box by having an “R” next to their name? Why should they benefit from the volunteers and grassroots activists who slug it out in the trenches each and every day doing the grunt work of voter registration and get-out-the-vote? Why should they benefit from all the money people all over the country donate to the Republican Party?
It’ll be a rare thing for me to agree with Barack Obama on just about anything over the next four years, but I have to agree with him on this: If company executives take taxpayer bailout money to prop up their businesses, then those executives should be subjected to “strings,” such as caps on executive compensation.
If you take our money, you take our conditions. It’s that simple. It’s the Golden Rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
Ditto RINOs who constantly stab the Republican Party in the back – like Specter, Collins and Snowe. If they can’t get with the party’s program, fine. But they shouldn’t expect to get the party’s support and money. They shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways. If they want to be independent, then run as independents. Like Joe Lieberman.
But if they want the benefits of running as a Republican, then sometimes they need to suck it up and be a Republican. And if they can’t or won’t, the GOP - for its own sake and the fiscal sake of the nation - needs to cull these RINOs from the elephant herd. No money. No endorsement. No volunteers. No nothing.
Until they bring back tar-and-feathering.
*********************************************************************************
In the Valley of Elephants, RINOs Are King Posted by Chuck MuthFebruary 9, 2009 at 1:25 pm
>> Printer-Friendly Version
Talk about pulling the rug out from under you. Talk about sucking the air out of your balloon. Talk about killing a rally. Talk about “Republican” U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
Congressional Republicans got their keisters kicked at the ballot box last November. They were depressed. Lethargic. Apathetic. There wasn’t enough Xanax, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Prozac and Paxil combined in the Capitol to service everybody. Heck, they almost had to start re-importing some from Canada just to handle the demand.
Then Obama was sworn in and the floodgates of spending on every Democrat pet program under the sun – including contraceptives and sod – were opened. Bingo! A “trillion dollar turkey” spending bill disguised as a catastrophe-avoiding “stimulus” bill.
And then suddenly…Republicans in the House of Representatives re-discovered fiscal conservatism. I mean, it was like the Grinch suddenly discovering that Christmas had nothing to do with spending money on gifts and presents and earmarks and bridges to nowhere.
“Being Republican," they thought, "doesn't come from a store. Being Republican, perhaps, means a little bit more! And what happened then? Well, in Washington they say, The GOP's small spine, Grew three sizes that day!”
House Republicans knew they didn’t have the votes to stop the Obama Spending Express. But that wasn’t their challenge. Their challenge was to see if they could all band together and vote unanimously against the “trillion dollar turkey” – the way Republicans banded together and unanimously embraced the Contract With America way back in ’94.
And they did.
I don’t know how they ever pulled it off, but it was a thing of beauty. It drove the Democrats and the mainstream media cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. How could Republicans stand united on principle and in opposition to the great and powerful Obamessiah? HOW DARE THEY?!!
But they did. Not only was it the right vote to cast from a public policy standpoint; it was the right vote politically, as well. It was a mega-shot of adrenaline in the arm of GOP grassroots activists and party leaders. I know. I was at the Republican National Committee meeting in Washington the week of that vote and it was the talk of the town. Happy days were here again!
“Can you believe the Republicans actually stood united? Maybe there’s hope for us after all!”
But then…the issue went over to the Senate.
Unlike in the House, if Senate Republicans were to stand united in opposition to this bloated, larded-up spending bill - they could actually STOP it. Because unlike in the House, the 41 Republican senators could filibuster this bill. And, oh, what a political blow that would be to Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi - in addition to doing what’s right for the country!
Alas, three “moderate” Republicans on Friday turned this lemonade into a lemon. It was like being first-and-goal from the two-yard line in the Super Bowl and throwing an interception which gets run back 100 yards for a touchdown by the opposing team – not that that would ever happen.
Specter, Collins and Snowe sold out their 38 GOP colleagues and every Republican member of the House by cutting a deal and giving the Democrats’ the 60 votes they needed for this “trillion dollar turkey” to go through. In doing so, they not only assured the socialist-Democrats now running the country a huge and expensive political and legislative victory, but they stopped dead in its tracks the momentum Republicans had been successfully building with the American people against this proposal.
Why, oh why, did we ever stop the practice of tar-and-feathering?
Folks, this was nothing short of giving aid-and-comfort to the opposition. And these three “Republicans In Name Only” (RINOs) have done this sort of thing over and over and over again for many, many years. But this was a big one. Huge. When will the party finally say “enough is enough”? Why is the GOP allowing a handful of RINOs to control the party’s direction and future?
Yes, I fully understand the political reality that majorities get to lead - and you gain majorities by addition, not subtraction. But what about all of the fiscally conservative voters the GOP is losing thanks to RINOs like Specter, Collins and Snowe undermining the party’s message and ruining the “brand”?
It’s a painful dilemma to be sure. So the question naturally arises, “What would Ronald Reagan do?” Fortunately, we have his CPAC speech from 1975 to guide us:
“A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers. . . . And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.”
If these three RINOs want to be independent, throw their Republican colleagues under the bus, and vote however they want - even on bills as contradictory to the fundamental principles of the GOP as this BS “stimulus” bill – then they should go their own way and run for election as independents, not Republicans.
Why should these RINOs benefit at the ballot box by having an “R” next to their name? Why should they benefit from the volunteers and grassroots activists who slug it out in the trenches each and every day doing the grunt work of voter registration and get-out-the-vote? Why should they benefit from all the money people all over the country donate to the Republican Party?
It’ll be a rare thing for me to agree with Barack Obama on just about anything over the next four years, but I have to agree with him on this: If company executives take taxpayer bailout money to prop up their businesses, then those executives should be subjected to “strings,” such as caps on executive compensation.
If you take our money, you take our conditions. It’s that simple. It’s the Golden Rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
Ditto RINOs who constantly stab the Republican Party in the back – like Specter, Collins and Snowe. If they can’t get with the party’s program, fine. But they shouldn’t expect to get the party’s support and money. They shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways. If they want to be independent, then run as independents. Like Joe Lieberman.
But if they want the benefits of running as a Republican, then sometimes they need to suck it up and be a Republican. And if they can’t or won’t, the GOP - for its own sake and the fiscal sake of the nation - needs to cull these RINOs from the elephant herd. No money. No endorsement. No volunteers. No nothing.
Until they bring back tar-and-feathering.
Monday, February 9, 2009
The audacity of cynacism or We all go down together!
I couldn't have said it better myself
Obama, All at Sea
It’s the new president’s mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. By Mark Steyn (as published in The National Review Online)
In the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne tried to break it gently to us: “No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water.”Yeah, sure, no previous occupant of the White House has been able to walk on water—your Eisenhowers and Roosevelts, your Chester Arthurs and Grover Clevelands and whatnot. But Barack Obama didn’t run as just another of those squaresville losers. He was gonna heal the planet, and lower the oceans. So, even if he couldn’t walk on water, he should at least be able to paddle in it. “He is a community organizer like Jesus was,” said Susan Sarandon (oh my she is so on my list!), “and now we’re a community and he can organize us.”
So how’s that going? Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic-party interest groups. Jesus picked twelve disciples. Barack seems to have gone more for one of those Dirty Dozen, caper-movie line-ups, where the mission is so perilous and so audacious that only the scuzziest lowlifes recruited from every waterfront dive have any chance of pulling it off.
The ends justify the mean SOBs: “Indispensable” Tim Geithner, wanted in twelve jurisdictions for claiming his kid’s summer camp as a business expense, is the only guy with the savvy to crack the code of the U.S. economy.
Tom “Home, James!” Daschle is the ruthless backseat driver who can figure out how to steer the rusting gurney of U.S. health care through the corridors of power.
Charles Bronson is the hardbitten psycho ex-con who can’t go straight but knows how to turn around the Department of the Interior.
And, of course, there’s the lovable dough-faced shnook in the front office, Robert “Fall Guy” Gibbs. He didn’t do nuthin’ wrong, but, when seven nominees die in a grisly shootout with a Taxable Benefit Swat Team in the alley behind the Senate, he makes the mistake of looking sweaty and shifty while answering routine questions.
A president doesn’t have to be able to walk on water. But he does have to choose the right crew for the ship, especially if he’s planning on spending most of his time at the captain’s table schmoozing the celebrity guests with a lot of deep thoughts about “hope” and “change.” Far worse than his cabinet picks was President Obama’s decision to make the “stimulus” racket the all-but-sole priority of his first month, and then outsource the project to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Harry Reid. Appearing on The Rush Limbaugh Show last week, I got a little muddled over two adjoining newspaper clippings—one on the stimulus, the other on those octuplets in California—and for a brief moment the two stories converged. Everyone’s hammering that mom—she’s divorced, unemployed, living in a small house with parents who have a million bucks’ worth of debt, and she’s already got six kids. So she has in vitro fertilization to have eight more. But isn’t that exactly what the Feds have done? Last fall, they gave birth to an $850 billion bailout they couldn’t afford and didn’t have enough time to keep an eye on, and now four months later they’re going to do it all over again, but this time they want trillionuplets. Barney and Nancy represent the in vitro fertilization of the federal budget. And it’s the taxpayers who’ll get stuck with the diapers.
Those supporters who were wary of touting Obama as the walk-on-water Messiah did their best to lower expectations by hailing him merely as the new FDR. You remember the old FDR—“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Ha! With the new New Deal, we have everything to fear. As President Obama warned on Tuesday, “A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.” If you’re of those moonstruck Obammysoxers still driving around with the “HOPE, NOT FEAR” bumper stickers, please note that, due to an unfortunate proofreading error at the printing plant, certain nouns in that phrase may have been accidentally transposed.
As it happens, the best way to ensure catastrophe is to “act now.” It would be nice if the world could all prance along in regimented unison like the Radio City Changettes. But, alas, the foreigners made the mistake of actually reading the “stimulus” bill, and the protectionist measures buried on page 739 sub-section XII(d) ended, instantly, the Obama honeymoon overseas. The European Union has threatened a trade war. Up in Canada, provincial premiers called it “a march to insanity.” Wait a minute: I thought the Obama era was meant to be the retreat from insanity, a blessed return to multilateral transnational harmony?As longtime readers will know, I’m all in favor of flipping the bird to the global community. But at least, when Rummy was doing his shtick about “Old Europe,” he did it intentionally. To cheese off the foreigners entirely by accident before you’ve even had your first black-tie banquet is quite an accomplishment. Protectionism is serious business to the Continentals. Oh, to be sure, if the swaggering unilateralist Yank cowboy invades some Third World basket-case they’ll seize on it as an opportunity for some cheap moral posturing. But in the end they don’t much care one way or the other. Plunging the planet into global depression, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
The bloated non-stimulus and the under-taxed nominees are part of the same story. I’m with Tom Daschle: I understand why he had no desire to toss another six-figure sum into the great sucking maw of the federal treasury. Who knows better than a senator who’s voted for every tax increase to cross his desk that all this dough is entirely wasted? Tom and Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel and all the rest are right: They can do more good with the money than the United States government can. I only wish they followed the logic of their behavior and recognized that what works for them would also work for every other citizen. Instead, they insist that the sole solution to our woes is a record-setting, wasteful government-spending spree.
Maybe it’s time for President Obama to come out and give one of his big hopey-changey speeches. It’s been a few weeks now, and I kinda miss them. You know—“We are the change we’ve been waiting for.” “We have nothing to hope for but hope itself.” “Ask not what your hope can change for you, ask what you can hope for your change.” Etc.
But I wonder if the old songs from last month’s hit parade would play as well today. On Wednesday, Salon headlined a story on Obama: “The New Great Communicator . . . Isn’t.” Oh, dear. It’s early yet, but the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality, between the audacity of hope and the reality of pork, yawns ever wider. Right now, it’s the Obama mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. Some of us never expected him to walk on water. But we didn’t think he’d be all at sea taking on quite so much of it after a mere two weeks.
Obama, All at Sea
It’s the new president’s mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. By Mark Steyn (as published in The National Review Online)
In the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne tried to break it gently to us: “No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water.”Yeah, sure, no previous occupant of the White House has been able to walk on water—your Eisenhowers and Roosevelts, your Chester Arthurs and Grover Clevelands and whatnot. But Barack Obama didn’t run as just another of those squaresville losers. He was gonna heal the planet, and lower the oceans. So, even if he couldn’t walk on water, he should at least be able to paddle in it. “He is a community organizer like Jesus was,” said Susan Sarandon (oh my she is so on my list!), “and now we’re a community and he can organize us.”
So how’s that going? Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic-party interest groups. Jesus picked twelve disciples. Barack seems to have gone more for one of those Dirty Dozen, caper-movie line-ups, where the mission is so perilous and so audacious that only the scuzziest lowlifes recruited from every waterfront dive have any chance of pulling it off.
The ends justify the mean SOBs: “Indispensable” Tim Geithner, wanted in twelve jurisdictions for claiming his kid’s summer camp as a business expense, is the only guy with the savvy to crack the code of the U.S. economy.
Tom “Home, James!” Daschle is the ruthless backseat driver who can figure out how to steer the rusting gurney of U.S. health care through the corridors of power.
Charles Bronson is the hardbitten psycho ex-con who can’t go straight but knows how to turn around the Department of the Interior.
And, of course, there’s the lovable dough-faced shnook in the front office, Robert “Fall Guy” Gibbs. He didn’t do nuthin’ wrong, but, when seven nominees die in a grisly shootout with a Taxable Benefit Swat Team in the alley behind the Senate, he makes the mistake of looking sweaty and shifty while answering routine questions.
A president doesn’t have to be able to walk on water. But he does have to choose the right crew for the ship, especially if he’s planning on spending most of his time at the captain’s table schmoozing the celebrity guests with a lot of deep thoughts about “hope” and “change.” Far worse than his cabinet picks was President Obama’s decision to make the “stimulus” racket the all-but-sole priority of his first month, and then outsource the project to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Harry Reid. Appearing on The Rush Limbaugh Show last week, I got a little muddled over two adjoining newspaper clippings—one on the stimulus, the other on those octuplets in California—and for a brief moment the two stories converged. Everyone’s hammering that mom—she’s divorced, unemployed, living in a small house with parents who have a million bucks’ worth of debt, and she’s already got six kids. So she has in vitro fertilization to have eight more. But isn’t that exactly what the Feds have done? Last fall, they gave birth to an $850 billion bailout they couldn’t afford and didn’t have enough time to keep an eye on, and now four months later they’re going to do it all over again, but this time they want trillionuplets. Barney and Nancy represent the in vitro fertilization of the federal budget. And it’s the taxpayers who’ll get stuck with the diapers.
Those supporters who were wary of touting Obama as the walk-on-water Messiah did their best to lower expectations by hailing him merely as the new FDR. You remember the old FDR—“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Ha! With the new New Deal, we have everything to fear. As President Obama warned on Tuesday, “A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.” If you’re of those moonstruck Obammysoxers still driving around with the “HOPE, NOT FEAR” bumper stickers, please note that, due to an unfortunate proofreading error at the printing plant, certain nouns in that phrase may have been accidentally transposed.
As it happens, the best way to ensure catastrophe is to “act now.” It would be nice if the world could all prance along in regimented unison like the Radio City Changettes. But, alas, the foreigners made the mistake of actually reading the “stimulus” bill, and the protectionist measures buried on page 739 sub-section XII(d) ended, instantly, the Obama honeymoon overseas. The European Union has threatened a trade war. Up in Canada, provincial premiers called it “a march to insanity.” Wait a minute: I thought the Obama era was meant to be the retreat from insanity, a blessed return to multilateral transnational harmony?As longtime readers will know, I’m all in favor of flipping the bird to the global community. But at least, when Rummy was doing his shtick about “Old Europe,” he did it intentionally. To cheese off the foreigners entirely by accident before you’ve even had your first black-tie banquet is quite an accomplishment. Protectionism is serious business to the Continentals. Oh, to be sure, if the swaggering unilateralist Yank cowboy invades some Third World basket-case they’ll seize on it as an opportunity for some cheap moral posturing. But in the end they don’t much care one way or the other. Plunging the planet into global depression, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
The bloated non-stimulus and the under-taxed nominees are part of the same story. I’m with Tom Daschle: I understand why he had no desire to toss another six-figure sum into the great sucking maw of the federal treasury. Who knows better than a senator who’s voted for every tax increase to cross his desk that all this dough is entirely wasted? Tom and Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel and all the rest are right: They can do more good with the money than the United States government can. I only wish they followed the logic of their behavior and recognized that what works for them would also work for every other citizen. Instead, they insist that the sole solution to our woes is a record-setting, wasteful government-spending spree.
Maybe it’s time for President Obama to come out and give one of his big hopey-changey speeches. It’s been a few weeks now, and I kinda miss them. You know—“We are the change we’ve been waiting for.” “We have nothing to hope for but hope itself.” “Ask not what your hope can change for you, ask what you can hope for your change.” Etc.
But I wonder if the old songs from last month’s hit parade would play as well today. On Wednesday, Salon headlined a story on Obama: “The New Great Communicator . . . Isn’t.” Oh, dear. It’s early yet, but the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality, between the audacity of hope and the reality of pork, yawns ever wider. Right now, it’s the Obama mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. Some of us never expected him to walk on water. But we didn’t think he’d be all at sea taking on quite so much of it after a mere two weeks.
My sincere and heartfelt apologies...
I would like to extend my heartfelt apologies to my great-great-great grandchildren. I am sorry that your country's lack of foresight and refusal to learn from the past left you with a national debt the likes of which you can never never pay off. I'm sorry that the leaders of my time were too wrapped up in 0ne administration's scare tactics and bribery schemes to truly realize that we could have pulled ourselves out of this financial crisis in its infancy by lightening the tax load for businesses and the middle class; by insisting that the unions loosen the stranglehold they have on American manufacturing; by recognizing that those who make money, spend money and those who live off of programs continue to live off of programs; by understanding that consumer confidence is one of the primary influences on the economy and bribery by fear in order to pass pork and to prop up the dozens of "organizations" that support the "puppet presidency" that actually only 52% of the American people elected (don't let your history books tell you any different!), is what is driving the middle class even deeper into their wallets furthering the downward spiral.
I extend further apologies to the society and country in which you are likely being raised. I know it may seem like an impossibility but once, in the USA we had what was called a Middle Class. A population of citizens that worked for what they owned, fought for what they believed and recognized that sometimes you just don't get what you want. You may ask, what happened to this middle class? They were fed lies that the government would take care of them and supply all that they needed in healthcare, education, housing but they didn't realize that they were paying for these things in higher taxes, less money in their pockets, reduced level of care, no influence on their retirement or investment decision making and a government that worked against them and their basic beliefs. They got lazy and got a system that was designed to screw them and destroy their existence.
I’m sorry that the people of the US in my time were so caught up in the thought that someone else will make it better for us, will fix us, will take care of us that we lost our way. That we were so concerned about the few, we lost sight of the many.
I hope the history books haven’t lied to you too badly.
Take care of yourselves; now you better hurry before the milk and bread line gets too long!
I extend further apologies to the society and country in which you are likely being raised. I know it may seem like an impossibility but once, in the USA we had what was called a Middle Class. A population of citizens that worked for what they owned, fought for what they believed and recognized that sometimes you just don't get what you want. You may ask, what happened to this middle class? They were fed lies that the government would take care of them and supply all that they needed in healthcare, education, housing but they didn't realize that they were paying for these things in higher taxes, less money in their pockets, reduced level of care, no influence on their retirement or investment decision making and a government that worked against them and their basic beliefs. They got lazy and got a system that was designed to screw them and destroy their existence.
I’m sorry that the people of the US in my time were so caught up in the thought that someone else will make it better for us, will fix us, will take care of us that we lost our way. That we were so concerned about the few, we lost sight of the many.
I hope the history books haven’t lied to you too badly.
Take care of yourselves; now you better hurry before the milk and bread line gets too long!
Will Barron's be the first victim of democrat censorship act?
Picked up this blog posted by Noel Shepard on Newsbusters.org. It discusses an article publised in Barron's about the "credit crisis". I guess the fairness doctrine's first victims will be Barron's, then Rush, then Sean, then Levine, then Glen, then...
Editorial: Bush Had Nothing To Do With Financial Crisis
As the financial crisis hit last September, NewsBusters regularly informed readers of the truth behind the matter, and that media assertions the Bush administration was to blame were politically motivated falsehoods intentionally designed to get Barack Obama elected president.
On Saturday, the financial publication Barron's offered readers an editorial by Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell which presented facts that were routinely withheld from the public during the campaign assuring the Democrat candidate victory in November.
More importantly, Powell offered some compelling insights into the dangers of partisanship which sadly is negatively impacting today's stimulus package discussion.
But before we get there, this was Powell's case as to who was really to blame for this crisis (h/t Hot Air):
CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.
The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.
"Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades."
"The bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 to prevent corporate fraud and restore investor confidence after the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. It failed to prevent the accounting fraud and influence-peddling scandals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And even after those scandals were widely understood, regulators sent Fannie and Freddie back into the market to continue buying subprime loans, lending and borrowing with implied taxpayer backing."
Across the government, the Bush administration supported new regulations that added almost 1,000 pages a year to the Federal Register, nearly a record. If this is insufficient regulation, it's hard to imagine a scope that would be effective."
Powell of course was spot on. Sarbanes-Oxley was indeed a comprehensive and encompassing piece of legislation specifically designed to prevent a repeat of the tech bubble and Enron. Yet, as the financial crisis raged last fall, media members who wanted to blame the problem on Bush and deregulation conveniently forgot this sweeping bill.
But there's more:
"Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system. "
"The risk lurking in the GSE portfolios was acknowledged in the Bush administration's first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. It stated that Fannie and Freddie were "a potential problem" because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in the financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity." Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan issued repeated warnings that the GSEs "placed the total financial system of the future at substantial risk." Such warnings went unheeded even after accounting scandals rocked Fannie and Freddie."
Yep. The Bush administration began warning of problems with Fannie and Freddie just three months into its first term, and continued doing so for years. But you wouldn't know that from how the press reported things last fall, would you?
However, what's done is done. The press wanted Obama to be president, and by dishonestly blaming Bush for the financial crisis, so-called journalists were able to paint John McCain as also being at fault thereby making it impossible for him to win.
Yet, Powell left us with a warning concerning this matter that is quite important given economic stimulus plans currently being discussed: (and this is te most important lesson kiddies! so pay attention here)
"But the lesson should be clear that socializing failed businesses -- whether in housing, health care or in Detroit -- is not a long-term solution. Expanding government's intrusion into the private sector doesn't come without great risk. The renewing and self-correcting nature of the private sector is largely lost in the public sector, where accountability is impaired by obfuscation of responsibility, and where special interests benefit even when the public good is ill-served."
"George Washington also warned against excessive partisanship, which distracts public councils and enfeebles public administration. Rather than blaming the party in power or the party formerly in power, the nation should stop living in denial of the mistakes of both parties.
Spreading failure across the entire economy risks turning a recession into a depression. Regulatory reform now must foster responsible behavior and financial accountability. Far better for our citizenry and businesses to have a strength and resourcefulness that comes from creativity, honesty and self-reliance than to have a growing dependence on a profligate government."
Powell touched on a lot of issues here that should be at the front of the current stimulus debate but sadly aren't.
In particular, the partisanship in the nation today prevents an honest assessment of the past thereby dooming us to repeat the same mistakes.
Take for example the Great Depression. For almost 80 years the left and their media minions have done everything within their power to blame all that era's ills on Herbert Hoover while crediting Franklin D. Roosevelt with the eventual economic recovery despite the former presiding over only two years of the Depression.
Yet, after eight years of unprecedented federal spending under Roosevelt, the unemployment rate was still a staggering 14.6 percent in 1940, and the Gross Domestic Product was still under its pre-Depression level.
Isn't this important, especially since our federal debt is already quite high?
Unfortunately, because of the partisanship, such can't be discussed. The left have so much time and money invested in Roosevelt supposedly being the greatest president of the 20th century that an honest assessment of what did and did not work back then is verboten.
But isn't that absurd? Assuming we really are on the verge of another Depression -- an assumption I don't necessarily agree with yet, mind you -- shouldn't we be examining everything we did before and during the last one in order to chart a more effective course this time?
The fact is the last Depression began in 1931 and despite all Roosevelt's good intentions didn't end until America entered World War II in 1941. Once the war ended, we went back into a very serious recession suggesting that nothing Roosevelt implemented had a lasting positive economic impact.
Isn't this relevant, especially given the Congressional Budget Office's report last week predicting current stimulus plans will actually hurt the economy in the long run?
Sadly, the answer is "No," for the left are so protective of Roosevelt's legacy that any analysis of his economic policies is totally unacceptable even as our nation grapples with solutions to our current financial problems.
Is this the way adults should behave? Is this really the best we can get from our elected officials?
Given the known failings and wastefulness of last year's TARP, wouldn't we be well-advised to halt all current stimulus discussions until a thorough and impartial analysis of previous plans -- INCLUDING those implemented by us during the '30s and by Japan during the '90s -- was accomplished thereby increasing the likelihood of success while reducing the chance of us making exactly the same mistakes?
If the answer is "No," the only conclusion is that Party, at this critical juncture in our nation's history, is indeed more important than policy, and partisanship is asphyxiating our capital.
George Washington must be rolling over in his grave.
Editorial: Bush Had Nothing To Do With Financial Crisis
As the financial crisis hit last September, NewsBusters regularly informed readers of the truth behind the matter, and that media assertions the Bush administration was to blame were politically motivated falsehoods intentionally designed to get Barack Obama elected president.
On Saturday, the financial publication Barron's offered readers an editorial by Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell which presented facts that were routinely withheld from the public during the campaign assuring the Democrat candidate victory in November.
More importantly, Powell offered some compelling insights into the dangers of partisanship which sadly is negatively impacting today's stimulus package discussion.
But before we get there, this was Powell's case as to who was really to blame for this crisis (h/t Hot Air):
CONTRARY TO A VIEW POPULARIZED DURING THE 2008 presidential election season, the current economic crisis was not the result of deregulation.
The Bush administration made many mistakes, but deregulation was not one of them.
"Not only was there no major deregulation passed during the past eight years, but the Bush administration and a Republican Congress approved the most sweeping financial-market regulation in decades."
"The bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 to prevent corporate fraud and restore investor confidence after the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. It failed to prevent the accounting fraud and influence-peddling scandals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And even after those scandals were widely understood, regulators sent Fannie and Freddie back into the market to continue buying subprime loans, lending and borrowing with implied taxpayer backing."
Across the government, the Bush administration supported new regulations that added almost 1,000 pages a year to the Federal Register, nearly a record. If this is insufficient regulation, it's hard to imagine a scope that would be effective."
Powell of course was spot on. Sarbanes-Oxley was indeed a comprehensive and encompassing piece of legislation specifically designed to prevent a repeat of the tech bubble and Enron. Yet, as the financial crisis raged last fall, media members who wanted to blame the problem on Bush and deregulation conveniently forgot this sweeping bill.
But there's more:
"Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system. "
"The risk lurking in the GSE portfolios was acknowledged in the Bush administration's first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. It stated that Fannie and Freddie were "a potential problem" because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in the financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity." Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan issued repeated warnings that the GSEs "placed the total financial system of the future at substantial risk." Such warnings went unheeded even after accounting scandals rocked Fannie and Freddie."
Yep. The Bush administration began warning of problems with Fannie and Freddie just three months into its first term, and continued doing so for years. But you wouldn't know that from how the press reported things last fall, would you?
However, what's done is done. The press wanted Obama to be president, and by dishonestly blaming Bush for the financial crisis, so-called journalists were able to paint John McCain as also being at fault thereby making it impossible for him to win.
Yet, Powell left us with a warning concerning this matter that is quite important given economic stimulus plans currently being discussed: (and this is te most important lesson kiddies! so pay attention here)
"But the lesson should be clear that socializing failed businesses -- whether in housing, health care or in Detroit -- is not a long-term solution. Expanding government's intrusion into the private sector doesn't come without great risk. The renewing and self-correcting nature of the private sector is largely lost in the public sector, where accountability is impaired by obfuscation of responsibility, and where special interests benefit even when the public good is ill-served."
"George Washington also warned against excessive partisanship, which distracts public councils and enfeebles public administration. Rather than blaming the party in power or the party formerly in power, the nation should stop living in denial of the mistakes of both parties.
Spreading failure across the entire economy risks turning a recession into a depression. Regulatory reform now must foster responsible behavior and financial accountability. Far better for our citizenry and businesses to have a strength and resourcefulness that comes from creativity, honesty and self-reliance than to have a growing dependence on a profligate government."
Powell touched on a lot of issues here that should be at the front of the current stimulus debate but sadly aren't.
In particular, the partisanship in the nation today prevents an honest assessment of the past thereby dooming us to repeat the same mistakes.
Take for example the Great Depression. For almost 80 years the left and their media minions have done everything within their power to blame all that era's ills on Herbert Hoover while crediting Franklin D. Roosevelt with the eventual economic recovery despite the former presiding over only two years of the Depression.
Yet, after eight years of unprecedented federal spending under Roosevelt, the unemployment rate was still a staggering 14.6 percent in 1940, and the Gross Domestic Product was still under its pre-Depression level.
Isn't this important, especially since our federal debt is already quite high?
Unfortunately, because of the partisanship, such can't be discussed. The left have so much time and money invested in Roosevelt supposedly being the greatest president of the 20th century that an honest assessment of what did and did not work back then is verboten.
But isn't that absurd? Assuming we really are on the verge of another Depression -- an assumption I don't necessarily agree with yet, mind you -- shouldn't we be examining everything we did before and during the last one in order to chart a more effective course this time?
The fact is the last Depression began in 1931 and despite all Roosevelt's good intentions didn't end until America entered World War II in 1941. Once the war ended, we went back into a very serious recession suggesting that nothing Roosevelt implemented had a lasting positive economic impact.
Isn't this relevant, especially given the Congressional Budget Office's report last week predicting current stimulus plans will actually hurt the economy in the long run?
Sadly, the answer is "No," for the left are so protective of Roosevelt's legacy that any analysis of his economic policies is totally unacceptable even as our nation grapples with solutions to our current financial problems.
Is this the way adults should behave? Is this really the best we can get from our elected officials?
Given the known failings and wastefulness of last year's TARP, wouldn't we be well-advised to halt all current stimulus discussions until a thorough and impartial analysis of previous plans -- INCLUDING those implemented by us during the '30s and by Japan during the '90s -- was accomplished thereby increasing the likelihood of success while reducing the chance of us making exactly the same mistakes?
If the answer is "No," the only conclusion is that Party, at this critical juncture in our nation's history, is indeed more important than policy, and partisanship is asphyxiating our capital.
George Washington must be rolling over in his grave.
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