Climate Alarmists' Case Collapsing: It's the Sun, Stupid

Recent research confirms that the sun -- and not the supposed evils against which AGore and his fellow profiteering alarmists have been clamoring -- is primarily responsible for, and changes in the earth's temperature and climate.  The new and reputable scientific findings are outlined in this report.


Having already been forced to switch from global warming to climate change disaster claims, the P. T. Barnum imitators (and their pandering politician and media followers) now are going to have to try to figure out how to convince -- and profit from convincing -- their hysterical suckers that human beings can and should control the sun and that they have the knowledge and ability to do so.

Legislating Explained

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they predictably create for themselves a legal system that authorizes and protects it, a political party that enshrines it, and a 'moral' code to justify it.                                                               

. . . Frederic Bastiat

What's the Lesson Here?

Just look at the paraphernalia that Obama gets hauled into a school to enable him to speak to a classroom of kids

Podium,

teleprompters, lights, black boxes, 

and the secret service guy in

back on the look-out for any terrorist

8-year-olds or tea partying parents.

Here's what the last guy needed. You remember . . . the dumb one

Wish Congress Understood This

They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please

. . . . Thomas Jefferson

1791

Cogent Observation

THE TROUBLE WITH THE GENE POOL

 IS THAT IT HAS NO LIFEGUARD

Rethinking Political Positions

Although I recognized from his first appearance on the nation's political scene that the former junior senator from Illinois lacked a single qualification for the presidency, I never envisioned how destructive he actually would be as the nation's first ideologically programmed robotic president.


He has compelled me to reconsider and abandon my resolve to never again vote for a political candidate as the lesser of two evils. As things stand, Attila would get my vote were the Hun to be reincarnated and emerge as the only viable opposition to the 2012 reelection effort of the failed current occupant of the oval office.


Happily though, Rick Perry has emerged from Texas as a viable presidential candidate who has caused me to abandon another earlier position -- my previously expressed hesitancy about politicians from Texas. Mr. Perry to date has been giving every indication of being a real human being, an individual FOR whom I can cast a positive vote. 


It is a hopeful sign and heartening that Mr. Perry is being subjected to exactly the same sanctimonious ruling class slings and arrows that they a few decades ago directed at Ronald Reagan.


These attacks signal two things: First, that the Texas governor might actually be able to continue the restoration of our country that Reagan began, and second, that he has the nation's elitists -- who assume superiority to, and inherent entitlement to rule the rest of us -- shaking in their tasseled loafers.


That this is so is demonstrated by his having said the following to Laura Ingraham:


I am not an establishment figure, never have been and frankly I don’t want to be. I dislike Washington; I think it’s a seedy place. Our country is in trouble and I don’t have the privilege to sit on the sideline and watch our country be destroyed economically by a president who has been conducting an experiment on the American economy for the last two and half years.  


In addition he has been endorsed by one of his former political adversaries, the most famous Jewish cowboy in Texas, in this wonderful Kinky column.    

Explaining the D.C. Earthquake

Various theories have been offered for the 5.9 temblor that shook the seat of our federal government during the past week. Here are a few of the better ones:

*  The Weather Channel says the East Coast earthquake was caused by an unknown fault line running under D.C. and through Virginia. It is now being called Obama's Fault, though Obama is claiming it's really Bush's Fault.

*  The USGS has determined that the epicenter of the East Coast earthquake was in a graveyard just outside the beltway.  It appears to have been caused by the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.

*  Another theory is that what was believed to have been an earthquake actually were the effects of a $14.6 trillion check bouncing in Washington.

The Politicians' Looting Creed

We Have What It Takes

To Take What You Have

Warren Buffett, Big Time Big Government Beneficiary

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is out there clamoring for higher taxes on those whom politicians refer to as "wealthy" -- small business owners who are a great deal less wealthy than he is.


That's hardly surprising as Mr. Buffett is invested almost, though not altogether, in giant corporations . . . those that are deemed to be "too big to fail." Accordingly he is an indirect, though very substantial beneficiary of the bailouts and the other corporate welfare payments that the federal government channels to such behemoths.


So its only natural that he wants the public treasury to extract funds from the multitudes -- who are multitudes of magnitude less wealthy than he is -- to keep the gravy flowing into the giant corporations in which he is invested.


Mr. Buffett has just made a risk free $5 billion investment in the Bank of America, shoring up the bank's balance sheet, which had been deteriorating dramatically. The capital infusion was seen as a sign of Buffett's confidence in the B of A. The bank's common shares. which on the previous day had closed at $6.99, surged by 12% to $7.86 the next morning.


What Mr. Buffett actually is confident about is neither the financial skills nor the business acumen of the bank's management. It is based on the certainty that the government would keep the institution afloat come what may, just as it did the last time the "too big to fail" basket case was tottering.


In any event, Mr. Buffett almost immediately made a $500 million paper profit on his investment as a result of the uptick in the bank's stock price that resulted from his display of confidence. He didn't buy any common stock. He got preferred stock paying a 6% dividend together with warrants giving him the right to acquire common stock for $7.14 a share. All of this puts him in a significant advantage vis-a-vis B of A's common shareholders. In addition, he'd stand ahead of those common folk on a liquidation in the unlikely event of the bank actually failing.


This has become something of a modus operandi for the Omaha based investment sage. His other similar investments include:


*  Investment banking goliath Goldman Sachs, which benefitted from both a prior government bailout and the feds having watched without similarly rescuing its competitors as they went down the drain, and


*  General Electric, which Obama's CEO buddy, Jeffrey Immelt, has  transformed into a bloated dependent adjunct of the government and that now epitomizes the corrupt nature of such symbiotic relationships.


Mr. Buffett also is an investor in The Washington Post, which, though not a bailout recipient, is nonetheless also a dependent (as well a virtual house organ) of the federal government, its bureaucracy, and the ruling political elite. The newspaper is doing quite nicely thanks to its business location in Washington, D.C., and its environs. The area is thriving on tax dollars as the government sucks the economic life blood out of the rest of the country. Even real estate is doing well, with prices rising apace with the inexorable growth of the parasitic industry located there.


While the rest of the country is experiencing disastrous unemployment and economic stagflation, at federal regulatory agencies employment has increased by 13% and budgets have risen by 16% under the Obama administration . . . and that's even before full implementation of such major regulation expanding measures as its financial reform and health care  bills.


The "sage of Omaha" has plenty of incentive to keep the volume of tax funded gravy growing.

Lessons Ignored

We have tried spending money.  We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started .  . . .  And an enormous debt to boot!

  . . . Henry Morgenthau

(FDR's Secretary of the Treasury)

May 1939, on learning that the nation's

unemployment rate stood at 27%

*     *     *     *     *

The largest barrier to full employment of  our manpower and resources, and to a higher rate of economic growth, is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.

. . . President John F. Kennedy

January 24, 1963

Obama's Employment Czar Creating Jobs . . . In China

General Electric is moving its X-Ray division from Waukesha , Wisconsin, to Beijing . In addition to moving the headquarters, GE is investing $2 billion in China, and training more than 65 engineers and creating six research centers there..

This is the same GE that made $5.1 billion last year but paid no federal income taxes. It now employs more people overseas than it does in the United States .

 

This is the record of the guy the Prez made his job czar . GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt is the chairman of Obama's 26-member Jobs and Competitiveness Council, which is supposed to help create jobs.

The Prez apparently forgot to specify the  country in which Mr. Immelt is supposed to be creating those jobs.

Obama's Record Setting Accomplishment

Under Obama's 'leadership" the nation's indebtedness has reached a new high, surpassing all prior levels by several orders of magnitude . . . but that's not all -- it is increasing by $3 million each and every minute. Let's see,  60 minutes per hour multiplied by 24 hours in a day means we're running the red ink up by $3,000,000 times 1,440 every day. You do the math; numbers that high make me ill as well as sorry for our grandchildren.


And, by the way, the Pentagon has reported that the ongoing Libyan adventure -- which the Prez unilaterally ordered six months ago, saying it would take "days not weeks" -- has so far cost the country $896 billion. Inasmuch as Obama claims everything he spends is an "investment," I can hardly wait to find out what we'll get from this one.


We ain't seen nuthin' yet. Just wait till he unveils his uneconomic economic program come Labor Day.

Alarming Lesson of Global Warming Alarmists

The global warming arguments that almost hoodwinked the U.S. into rushing to take supposedly corrective actions that were ill conceived and counterproductive have been crumbling for some time and now have been exposed as bogus frauds.


Most of the opportunists who sought political power by joining the chorus of those shouting fire in the crowded comic theater into which the nation's political discourse has been transformed have had sufficient good sense to slip off what appeared to be a popular bandwagon. With a few notable exceptions, they now are silent about climate change or actively seeking to distance themselves from the discredited cause.


Not so AGore, who has profited greatly by pushing absurd and now obviously false alarmist claims. He clearly has gone 'round the bend and become unhinged. His grip on reality and lucidity deteriorated apace with, and almost in synchronized coordination with the credibility of his arguments.


Much of this is outlined in this admirably coherently report.


But the report doesn't reach the implications of AGore, as vice president, having been just a heartbeat away from the presidency and, as the presidential nominee of the Demorat Party, having  come close to winning election to the oval office in his own right. 


We obviously need to careful consider, reexamine, and revamp the process by which we vet the quality of those we elect to high offices which give them great power. We need to do better -- very much better -- at determining the qualifications, including the emotional and mental stability, of those individuals. 

Obama's Magical Misery Bus Tour

President Barrack Hussein Obama walks to his bus on his August 15 arrival at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where he began his three-day bus  tour, campaigning for reelection in the Midwest under the guise of connecting with people on ways to grow the economy.
*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

 The three-day bus tour was  touted as The Magical Mystery Tour or The STIMUBUS.  Two of the buses were bought (in Canada) for $1.1 million each . . .  and, of course, paid for by American taxpayers.

Obama would fly into a Midwest airport, hop into and get driven about in one of buses purchased new for the tour. After an hour or so, he would get driven back to the airport for another flight, landing at another airport where the other brand new black bus would be waiting for him . . . and do this repeatedly until his magical tour was done.  Then he left on his 12-day Martha's Vineyard vacation to rest up from the ardors of the bus tour.

By the way, those black buses were not driven to the locations where they meet Obama. The buses got loaded onto C-17 aircraft and flown to the destination, repeatedly hop-scotching to be available at every campaign stop ahead of Air Force-1.

In the course of his tour the Prez lectured the 'little people' on how they need to cut back and live within their means.  Remember when Obama recently told that family man who said he couldn’t afford to fill up his SUV to go buy a hybrid?

Obama's personal 'carbon footprint' must by now be as large as most cities.

Filling a Need

'Tis a Puzzlement

The Prez today emerged from his vacation hideout to kibitz about events in Libya -- hardly an urgent matter, or one of great or widespread concern to Americans. 


Obviously though, those events weigh far more heavily on our speechifying leader than the nation's economic and employment situation. He obviously sees no need to interrupt his vacation to address those less pressing matters before he returns to the White House after Labor Day. 


He then will insist that the nation keep trying, and spend even more money -- either sucked out of the economy or borrowed and added to the deficit -- on his failed policies of the past.

Collective Nouns Explain Things

The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of creatures.

We are all familiar with a Herd of cows, a Flock of chickens, a School of fish and a Gaggle of geese.

However, less widely known is a Pride of lions, a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an Exaltation of doves and, presumably because they look so wise, a Parliament of owls.

Now consider a group of Baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive, and least intelligent of all primates. And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons? Believe it or not . . . a Congress!

That pretty much explains the things that come out of Washington!

So Much For Privacy - Gone With Implied Consent

A Prediction Coming True

Texas Bank's Window Signs

Chappell Hill is a small town between Houston and Brenham on Hwy 290

Notice the sign on the front door

Conforming to Reality

Mindless Spending . . . But It's Just Taxpayer Money

Wait for Video to Load

God's Sense of Humor

While creating wives, God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the world . . . and then He made the earth round.

Beware of the Cogitator and the Nonsensical Vacation Ploy

With our economy sinking into stagflation, the nation's purported leader has gone off on vacation. He is delaying until he returns to the White House the unveiling of his proposed solution to the mess he has created . 


This would make no sense and be unimaginably cruel if he actually had a plan or even any ideas for getting the nation out of the financial morass into which he has steered it.

The vacation is understandable only as a necessary excuse for a delay to give the President and his advisors time to come up with something that can be made to appear feasible.  The vital question is the end toward which the plan will be designed. 


It is a almost certain that what he and his minions will be trying to hatch while he is ensconced in his luxurious Martha's Vineyard vacation digs,  (between rounds of golf at tony country clubs) will be a political rather than an economic plan.

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve already have expended everything in their arsenals in their past failed efforts to stem the nation's economic decline. Their weapons proved to be inadequate to counter the effects of (i) decades of overspending by the government, (ii) the huge deficit and accumulated debt, (iii) gross overregulation, (iv) a tax system that is unreasonably burdensome, grotesquely over complex, and inexorably becoming ever more so, and (v) justified widespread apprehension about what the increasingly large and intrusive government might impose next on the country and its productive capacity.


An economic resurgence would require dramatic and radical reversals of these statist afflictions. That isn't going to happen. Such reversals would lessen the power of the nation's ruling elites. It would be particularly abhorrent to the ideologically committed but economically ignorant former community organizer who occasionally occupies the White House these days. 

Therefore, instead of engaging in the difficult task of thinking deeply about the economy, he's cogitating about politics . . . something at which he is reasonably adept. He and his gang of looters will be trying to fashion something that will put his political opponents into a no-win trap.

What can be expected to come out of the process will make no sense economically. But it will be something made to appear attractive and promising, and to blur, if not totally obscure, its requiring still more spending by the government of money that it doesn't have.


Its primary purpose will be to put Obama into a position that will enable him and his fellow Demorats to blame and vilify the Republicons for the debacle that will continue and probably worsen irrespective of whether the plan is adopted and implemented, modified, or rejected. 

As noted above, Obama is pretty good at politics. 

It behooves all of us to recognize the realities of what is taking place and what is coming. And the Republicons would do well to beware of, and to prepare for what's going to be coming out of Martha's Vineyard.

Not Made In the USA

That million dollar armored bus -- a black behemoth that looks like a death star on wheels -- in which our leader (accompanied by a 50-vehicle caravan) traveled through Midwest states vital to his  reelection reportedly was made not in America's productive heartland or anywhere else in the U.S. but in Canada. So much for the bona fides of the purported economic education tour that was supposed to convince voters that he is focused on, and capable of improving the nation's disastrous unemployment rate. Now he is going off to focus on jobs (without ever resting) from his posh Martha's Vineyard vacation digs.


Here (after the commercial at the front end) is what the imperial procession looked like:

So Self Centered, He Can't Stop Talking About Himself

As we approach another 9-11 anniversary, our narcissist in chief was holding forth on today's terrorism dangers in general and those posed by "lone wolf" attackers in particular when he succumbed to the temptation to again talk about himself. He did so by pointing out:

A single individual committed to a destructive ideology can inflict great harm on the nation.

When the Oracle Obama Spoke the Truth

Awhile back, the world's greatest community organizer disavowed the exceptionalism of the U.S., stating that it was exceptional only in the same way as are a number of other countries. Prominent in his list of similarly exceptional nations was Greece, which he said was exceptional to the Greeks just as America is exceptional to Americans.


One can only speculate about whether he actually was sufficiently precognitive to foresee the financial ruin of the nations that he listed. But his statement was spectacularly correct in predicting both the exceptional transformational collapse of Greece into an economic and financial basket case and his then future but since realized success in bringing the U.S. down to a similar dismal level.


By slowing the world's greatest economic machine to almost a grinding halt, Obama also has succeeded in implementing another change. Under his administration the U.S. has ceased to be an exceptional power. An obviously less capable America no longer is the world's essential nation. Anyone who doubts this should think about the ramifications of the role the U.S. today is playing in Libya, holding the coats of, and cheering on its formerly dependent allies in the Libyan adventure that Obama helped initiate.


For a look at the process by which America abandoned its leadership role in the world and the ramifications of its having done so, take a look at this perceptive essay.  

It's Not Just In Africa That They're Rioting

Across the pond the oh so civilized Brits are reaping the riotous rewards -- hooligans running amuck in  wave after wave of indiscriminate looting, burning, and destruction -- of their politically correct policies:


*  They've gone soft on crime. Laws are viewed as mild suggestions or mere recommendations. Breaking them usually is penalized only rarely or laughably lightly.  Punishment for criminal conduct has come to be viewed as a barbaric and brutal relic of the past.


*  The populace has been disarmed, rendering individuals unable to defend themselves, their families and their property.


*  In addition, effective self defense has been criminalized. Those who dare to engage in it are even subject to far greater punishment than the real criminals against whom they defend themselves.


The result is social disintegration toward which the Brits have been sinking for decades during which it has been politically and socially incorrect to suggest acting to halt the slide, or even to openly take note of it.


Meanwhile, the U.S., is a few steps behind England. It nonetheless is continuing down the same degenerative path.  The nation's nominal leaders and media assiduously avoid public recognition of the problem even as riots spread and grow ever more destructive and violent in, around, and from America's rotting old inner cities.


It currently is virtually impossible to deal with the problem in any direct and effective systemic manner because many of the rampagers are black. Nobody want to risk being called a racist. Therefore our so-called leaders and our equally despicable and cowardly media cower in their protected enclaves. They assiduously avoid not only any counteractions but also any public mention or acknowledgment of the mounting dangers to which their paralysis and silence is exposing the public and its members. 


No society that through social and politically strictures prevents open public discussion of a problem ever will be capable of effectively dealing with, and resolving that problem.


Fortunately, Philadelphia's black mayor is daring to put his career on the line by taking the initiative and breaching the existing strictures. He is leading a crackdown on the lawless thugs and opening an attack on their antisocial lifestyles, as reported by the estimable Thomas Sowell in this admirable essay aimed at opening up overdue broad public discussions of the too long verboten subject  

Did Our Leader Misspeak Or Did I Misunderstand Him?

How long ago was it that our commander in chief stated that the Libyan adventure would be concluded in days, not weeks?


Maybe I misunderstood him. Perhaps he meant to say months, not weeks.


Or perhaps I misunderstood his promise and that's actually what he said.


In any case the lightening campaign is continuing and there's no end in sight.

Fair and Satisfying Foreclosure Turnabout

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Forecloser
www.thedailyshow.com
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Spectacular and Intriguing Mystery Unearthed

Fascinating and challenging historical questions -- far more than are answered -- are being raised by the stunning archaeological find described in this video.

AGore A'Gone 'Round the Bend

Our former vice president, who first began to publicly show signs of serious dementia when he refused to accept his failure to win election to the presidency, now appears to have become a complete potty-mouthed lunatic. The story, which the leftrickle media covered only in a protective abbreviated fashion, can be accessed by clicking here.


Could this be due to the drooling doofus having slipped away and escaped from some unknown and secret keepers? Or could it just be the full moon?


The nation should shudder at recalling that a guy so bizarrely abnormal and so out of touch with reality once was just a heartbeat away from the presidency.

A Serviceman Opts Out

When I joined the military, it was illegal to be homosexual, then it became optional, and now it's legal.  I'm getting out before Obama makes it mandatory.

Our Automotive Destiny?

On Politicians From Texas

The entry of Texas Gov. Rick Perry  into the race for the Republicon presidential nomination led me to reflect on political leaders that Texas has produced. Four immediately sprang to mind.


Two of them -- Sam Houston and Sam Rayburn -- were highly capable and decent, good, and even admirable individuals.


George W. Bush was and is very good and decent person, a caring, kind, gracious, and generous one. He's also gives every indication of being a really good guy with whom any time spent probably would be highly enjoyable. However, as a president he was by and large a disappointment, if not a  disaster.


Lyndon Johnson on the other hand was a very talented politician and leader.  But he was neither a decent nor a good  person. In fact he was a crude, oafish, and vulgar individual who often acted as a selfish and greedy embodiment of evil. 


In light of this history, I am inclined to limit my support of politicians coming out of Texas to those who are named Sam. Nonetheless, I'd probably make an exception to enthusiastically get behind a taciturn candidate named Calvin or Cal irrespective of from whence he hailed . . . and especially if he were to emerge from Vermont. 

Confessions of an Unabashed Tea Party Supporter (and Occasional Participant)

Yes, I am angry . . . furious in fact. I want the nation's budget to be brought into balance right now. Government should limit its spending to what it is taking in. I have neither any interest nor confidence in ethereal plans or fanciful programs to supposedly balance the budget a decade from now or at any illusory future time.


It is my strongly held opinion that:


*  It is wrong, immoral, and destructive for Americans and the government to be consuming goods and services while foisting the attendant costs onto our children, grand children, great grandchildren, and all unborn future generations.


*  Politicians who pose as leaders and do this are either stupid or evil or a combination of both those things. They are disgusting and reprehensible creatures who should be removed and permanently barred from positions of authority, and they deserve to be ostracized and shunned if not tarred and feathered or otherwise publicly humiliated.


*  Voters who do not understand the foregoing and act accordingly should be recognized and treated as the stupid and/or selfish individuals they are. 


Furthermore, I favor decreasing rather than increasing tax rates on anyone other than those not paying taxes at all. Spending can and should be limited to revenues by slashing the size of scope of government to conform to the Constitution. Doing that would have the added benefit of taming, or at least leashing what has become a gigantic, intrusive and obstreperous bullying monster. 


Insofar as taxes are concerned, all citizens should pay them. As things stand now, too many people are riding the wagon for free and too few people are bearing the overly heavy burden of pulling it.

 

Interesting Statistic

Great Britain's National Health Service, though only occasionally up to the job of providing adequate health care, is a super at providing job.  It is the world's sixth largest employer -- behind only (i) the Chinese military, (ii) Wal-Mart, (iii) China National Petroleum, (iv) China State Grid Corp., and (v) Indian Railways.

Thank Goodness We Dodged These Bullets

Americans should be congratulated for the wisdom they showed by electing that nation's current president. Just think about what the nation might have suffered had the voters been unwilling to ignore the record devoid of any accomplishments whatsoever by the former community organizer as well as his lack of any qualifications for the presidency.

Were it not for the rookie's inherent (though never previously exhibited) executive skills and wisdom:

 *  The legislative process would lack the transparency that he promised and brought, and  this might even have made it necessary to enact legislation to enable citizens to discover out what it contained. Without bills being posted on the internet to enable citizens to study, consider, and provide input regarding proposed laws before they were voted on, legislation might be cobbled together in the dark of night behind closed doors and then passed in an unseemly rush.

*  Unemployment might have risen to above eight percent of the nation's workforce and perhaps even be staying above that level for an extended period of time. 


*  We might still have troops fighting and dying in endless wars in an ever increasing number of Middle East quagmires, and we even might still have troops in Iraq.

*  Billions of dollars that supposedly were going into shovel ready projects to stimulate the economy might instead have gone into the coffers of political bosses and unions run by labor bosses supporting a corrupt administration.

*  Truncheon wielding racist thugs might have gotten off the hook for engaging in voter intimidation.

*  We might have had American law enforcement officers being shot by Mexican drug runners with guns put into their hands by a corrupt Department of Just Us.

*  We might have had a government wildly spending without ever having a budget in place.

*  Instead of having the government use its resources to alleviate the effects of a collapsing economy on its citizens, we might have had  the government wastefully funneling billions of taxpayer dollars from those citizens through the public treasury to the very gigantic financial institutions that caused the collapse. We might even have witnessed the government allowing those same institutions to use those funds to pay huge bonuses to the executives who were in charge when their excesses created the bubble that caused the economic collapse, and then that government might have begun a program of seizing and closing smaller financial institutions to increase the market share of their big favorites by removing their community based competitors.


*  We might have had a government unable to find and hold anyone responsible for the economic catastrophe.


*  We might have had a government run by lobbyists and tax evaders and cheats.

*  We might have had a government acting like a third world dictatorship, riding rough shod over well established rules of creditor priorities to pay off thuggish labor union supporters, destroying the rule of law (as well as the basis for anyone continuing to have any faith in it) in the course of restructuring the automobile industry through supine bankruptcy courts. In the same process the government might even have rewarded auto dealers who had supported it politically by shutting down competing dealers that had not done so.


*  We might have gotten an administration that would sue states in an effort to have the court prohibit the states from protecting themselves and their citizens from violators of federal immigration laws that the federal government would not or could not enforce.


*  We even might have had an undisciplined government going on an out of control spending and borrowing spree to the point that its once sterling credit rating would have been lost.


*  We might not have a leader able to rise above all the travails of the nation and its people to set an example for us all by taking full advantage of, and obviously relishing each and every trapping and perk of his office, enjoying constant luxurious travels, golf outings, and vacations, and seeing to it that his wife does the same. As previously noted, we would have missed watching our updated version of the Beverly Hillbillies. And in our modern out-of-Chicago version we are getting to see a jackpot winning family with a mean streak, and lacking the good taste, decorum, innate decency, honesty, strength of character, kindness and good will, and self discipline and restraint that the original Clampett clan always displayed. 

Some Other Guy In The Oval Office

A fictional habitual criminal in a mystery story I read year ago claimed complete innocence every time he was arrested, proclaiming in each of the multitude of such instances that "some other guy did it."


He did this so often that he came to be known as "Other Guy."


Now that the buck for none of America's many travails no longer stops at the White House, we perhaps should consider referring to the community organizer in chief as "Some Other Guy."


According to him, the government's debt, which has swelled by several orders of magnitude during his administration. is the responsibility of  some other guy. So too is the extended stagnation of our economy. The same is the case with respect to the horrendous and worsening unemployment rate with no end in sight. Americans being forced from their homes amid the ongoing waves of mortgage foreclosures should blame some other guy. Is it the same other guy or some other other guy who is responsible for our high gas prices and inflation? And still another other guy must be looked to, along with the Republicans, the rating agency, the Japanese earthquake, the tea party participants,  and who knows who and what else -- perhaps the mad hatter or the white rabbit -- for having caused the unprecedented downgrade of the government's credit rating. And of course some other guy is responsible for the federal government's out of control spending and the fact that it  for several years has been and currently still is operating without a budget and under continuing resolutions.


An administration that disclaims responsibility for anything and everything needs to be viewed as irresponsible. And its time for Americans to realize that if they want a responsible leader they really need to elect some other guy (or some gal) to the oval office. 

An Intelligent Suggestion

The Obama administration needs to stop tying to disarm the fire alarm and start trying to put out the fire.

. . . E-Mail received and reported 

by The Wall Street Journal about 

White House efforts to blame its 

political opponents and Standard  & Poor's 

for the downgrade of the government's credit rating.

Strike One on Our Economic Scorecard

Down one credit rating strike, two more left to go.


Default still ahead, and, make no mistake about it, it's coming. It's nature is becoming clearer . . . though still not precisely certain.


The government will discharge its financial obligations as they become due . . . but it will do so only nominally, just as it has in recent decades. It has paid and will pay the requisite number of dollars, simply by printing them as necessary to do so. But the dollars paid out have had, and will have no substance behind them and therefore possess only a fraction of the buying power they had when the obligations were incurred.


The best illustration of this is the price of gold. Gold is very stable in terms of buying power as its quantity is relatively fixed. I began buying gold when the supposedly conservative and fiscally responsible Republicons took control of congress after the 1994 elections. Although they since have been greatly surpassed by the recent administrations and congresses, the Republicon went on a spending binge that greatly exceeded those of their Demorat predecessors. In any event, my small stock of gold has an average cost basis of under $400 an ounce. Gold today is selling for more than $1,700 an ounce, which means that dollars today are worth less than 25% of what they were about a decade and a half ago.


That U.S. dollars still have any viability is due largely to their continuing role as the world's reserve currency. So long as our dollars continue in that role, they will depreciate at a rate similar to what we have experienced in the past and inflation will continue to grow at commensurate rates.


Although a fair number of nations are understandably dissatisfied with having the dollar continue as the world's reserve currency, there currently is no alternative available. Among western currencies the dollar is what a financially astute friend describes as "the cleanest shirt in a bad laundry." None of the other currencies out there could replace the dollar in its global role. They are either, like the Euro, in worse shape than the dollar, or, like the Swiss franc, from nations with insufficiently large economies.


However, I am inclined to believe that if enough of the world's powers continue for a long enough time to be dissatisfied with the dollar, they eventually will find or manufacture an alternative. If and when that occurs, watch out. The result probably would be a horrific rate of inflation or something else altogether without precedent.


Were the alternative, for example, to be an abrupt return to the gold standard, the dollar would be devastated. Even if the U.S. actually has in Fort Know the gold the government claims to still have in storage there -- an assumption that is subject to considerable doubt -- fully backing our outstanding dollars with that gold would mean that every ounce of the metal would have to back, and therefore be worth, somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000. That would mean that a dollar would have the buying power of something under 15 of today's pennies.


Hang in there sunshine. More hardball pitches are headed into our strike zone.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Government Political Lies About Unemployment

The government last week reported a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.2% to 9.1%.  


The numbers are bogus. 


First, those not applying for government unemployment benefits even though they are jobless are not included in the official data. Second, the report doesn't take into account people who have gone from high value jobs to menial and low paying ones. Third, the government does not include among the unemployed those who have become discouraged, given up, and stopped looking for work. 


Including these excluded individuals would raise the unemployment rate to somewhere between 15% and 25% of the nation's workforce, depending upon which of the supposed experts one chooses to believe.


However, all of this probably is also meaningless as it is based on figures put out by the government, and every step in the collection, compilation, and calculation of the numbers is controlled by a political establishment that is terrified of how the population might react were it aware of the enormity of the economic disaster that the ruling class has inflicted on the country. Accordingly, the data in all likelihood has been fiddled with and corrupted to present the best possible picture while maintaining a straight face when making the still grotesque figures public.


Good rule of thumb: Trust primarily what you and your friends and neighbors personally see and experience, and view with great skepticism all government announcements and media reports.

'Easy Payments' Must Start Early

'

Like the Proverbial Stopped Clock

The Anointed One today got something right . . . but the truth that he spoke was far less relevant than what he didn't say.


In his response to the downgrading of the government's credit rating, our community organizer in chief said the U.S. still is a triple A nation.


That's correct.


But what he didn't say is that it's a AAA nation with a DDD government and a D- administration.

Good News from Wisconsin

Remember the demonstrations over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing away with collective bargaining for teachers unions? The results are in. School districts went from deficits as great as $400,000 to surpluses of up to $1.5 million as a result. 

Why?
 

It appears that the insurance company that provided all the  "benefits" to the teachers was owned and operated by their union. Since it was guaranteed to get the business, with the state and not the teachers having to pay for it, the company was becoming Wisconsin's most expensive one by increasing the costs every year. The insurance company, in turn, was donating millions of dollars to its favorite Demorat politicians, who, when got elected, were sure to keep funding the union's outrageous costs. In other words, the insurance company was a "pass through," sending Wisconsin taxpayer money directly to the Demorat politicians.
Nice racket, and its going on in other states that allow collective bargaining by public employee unions. No wonder the states are fighting to curtail those "rights." 

Guess what's happening in Wisconsin now that the state is free to put the insurance contract out for bid.  Lo and behold, it has saved so much money that deficits are turning into surpluses. As a result, none of the teachers have had to be laid off, everyone got a raise, etc., etc., and the taxpayers aren't having to pay more taxes to fund the unions' political agendas.

Naturally, the leftrickle media isn't reporting this story but it has been set forth in this Washington Examiner account.