Category Archives: People

Completely Unaccountable

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Obama doesn’t even attempt to live within his means according to his latest budget:

[F]rom the year of Obama’s birth, 1961, through the last year of the Reagan administration, 1988, the United States of America accrued $2.4 trillion in new debt — again, in inflation-adjusted (2011) dollars. So Obama is now insisting that he be allowed to rack up the same amount of inflation-adjusted debt in the next 15 months as Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan did during Obama’s first 27 years.

Yet Obama doesn’t just want his $2.4 trillion. He wants this on his own terms. He has threatened to veto Republican legislation to cut, cap, and balance spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion, because he claims that “setting arbitrary spending levels” is not “necessary to restore fiscal responsibility.” This, from a president under whom the federal government is spending a little over $7 this year for every $4 it takes in, and a president who has refused to reform entitlements even though (according to his own budget) mandatory spending alone will exceed total federal revenues this year (and that’s before Obamacare has really even kicked in), and under whom annual deficit spending has been more than twice as high as a percentage of the gross domestic product than under any other recent president.

Obviously Obama thinks he is entitled to spend whatever he wants…. and the debt is someone else’s problem.  That is exactly why he can’t be re-elected.

SOTU Response

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Mitch Daniels had a compelling response to the President’s State of the Union address:

“In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt.  And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.  The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends.  No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery.  He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.  In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.

 

God I love this woman…

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“This is why Conservatives don’t have humans as Gods… they are always going to disappoint you… we have a real savior”

[on the chapter on liberal's contradictory thinking] They will viciously attack Clarence Thomas for dubious (and obviously false) … allegations about engaging in verbal sexual harassment and then they are hysterical about sexual McCarthyism… Teddy Kennedy kills a woman at Chappaquiddick and then spend the rest of his life looking into other people’s past…

Huffpocrisy?

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Merely mentioning the name “Andrew Breitbart” in certain circles is certain to cause the average blood-pressure to rise to dangerous levels very quickly. A former Drudge Report editor and Huffington Post consultant, Breitbart currently manages such sites as BigGovernment.com and Breitbart.com — both of which chronicle the hypocrisy what Breitbart sees as the dangers of the liberal agenda. As one would expect, this makes Breitbart somewhat of a target for the left; in fact, it would not be unreasonable to say that Breitbart threatens the left because of his fearlessness in attacking their agenda.

What surprised me over the course of the last week was just how threatened the left is by Breitbart… particularly when he starts putting his toes in the water of the liberal media outlets. None of this was more evident than when he was asked to contribute articles to the recently AOL acquired online magazine… The Huffington Post, a bastion of progressive thought. Once the left saw Breitbart encroaching on the pages of their sacred media outlet, cries of outrage began to fill the internet(s). If you follow the twitterverse like I do… outrage was everywhere:

cdashiell @ariannahuff It doesn’t matter where you put Breitbart. As long as he’s contributing to HuffPo it makes you illegitimate.

@ColorOfChange applauds @HuffingtonPost‘s decision 2 keep @AndrewBreitbart from front page of its site

Penny_G So sad @andrewbreitbart kicked out of another party (@huffingtonpost) tht he desperately wanted 2 b seen at#playthevictim

And, of course, my favorite:

knoxkp so the racist @andrewbreitbart got turfed! Nice. means i can keep reading the huffpo. FU reich wing! #p2#tcot

Now, the prevailing pretext for this outrage is that Breitbart engaged in Ad Hominem attacks against Van Jones, founder of “Color of Change” and former Green Energy Czar to President Barack Obama. In particular, Breitbart said that Van Jones was a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak”. Now, Breitbart has documented his reasons for his statements on his website… and while I’m not sure he was entirely justified in going as far as he did, he certainly was not creating these allegations from whole cloth. Furthermore, its not as if the Huffington Post is the New York Times, either. I read the HuffPo fairly regularly and expect to hear outrageous opinions. In fact, I can only imagine that this is exactly the image Adrianna Huffington intended to create for her paper. And, its not as if this is the first time Ad-Hominem attacks have been carried out by bloggers who write for the Huffington post, either. Breitbart is taking the opportunity to document the editorial hypocrisy for their selective decision to ban his articles from the homepage.

In short, what we see here is what happens when liberals encounter ideas and people that threaten them. Instead of ignoring the idea, or writing posts that debunk the accusation, they demand the writer should be silenced… banned from the paper. The very people who claim to be such passionate supporters of free speech seem to (in practice) only support free speech that re-enforces their world view. As soon as critical voice enters their realm — they simply reject its validity and attempt to destroy the person speaking.

In fact, I’ve written about this topic before:

[Liberals] cannot stand hearing such a favorable picture of Bush and they lash out with all their hatred and prejudice. Instead of offering constructive analysis and alternative perspectives… they simply disqualify the idea up front and avoid the difficult task of rational discussion.

Now, I have spoken in generalities… I admit. Not all Liberals are incapable of rational discussion (I have a number of liberal friends who are actually quite gifted rhetorically). Even so, perhaps the more important lesson to learn from this squabble is this: Liberals will always tell you who they fear by who they try to destroy. And if the attacks on Breitbart are any indication, he really threatens them.

Steele’s censure

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Shelby Steele isn’t pulling punches on the Sotomayor pick.

[T]he Sotomayor nomination shows that Mr. Obama has no idea what a post-racial society would look like. In selling himself as a candidate to the American public he is a gifted bargainer beautifully turned out in post-racial impressionism. But in the real world of Supreme Court nominations, where there is a chance to actually bring some of that idealism down to earth, he chooses a hardened, divisive and race-focused veteran of the culture wars he claims to transcend.

I have called Mr. Obama a bound man because he cannot win white support without bargaining and he cannot maintain minority support without playing the very identity politics that injure him with whites. The latter form of politics is grounded in being what I call a challenger — i.e., someone who presumes that whites are racist until they prove otherwise by granting preferences of some kind to minorities.

via Sotomayor and the Politics of Race – WSJ.com.

The financial crisis… and its causes.

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Ok. WOW. Hot Air.com just posted a SCATHING piece on Democrat’s indifference to regulatory oversight of Fannie and Freddie Mae — oversight the Bush administration championed and which was denounced as unnecessary by Democrats.

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times article five years ago:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago…

The new agency would have the authority… to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies… and it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Thank you; Barney Frank, Melvin Watt, and the rest of the Congressional Democrats. But this isn’t the end of the story. Not ONLY did Democrats stonewall regulatory reform of both institutions, but they also enacted legislation which created greater risk to both instiutiion’s portfolios.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory.”

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

What can we say, then? Basically, Democrats concerned about creating “affordable housing” — in other words, using quazi-government institutions to essentially provide well-fare to low income families in the form of below-market loans– created a pyramid-scheme where by increased home-buyers caused housing inflation–which allowed for the sub-prime loans to work–which caused more people to get subprime loans… which crashed the financial system when housing prices hit a market limit. In other words, ‘concerned liberals’ under the guise of providing low-income loans created a monster–a financial system built around loans that were never designed to be repaid.

Look where “good intentios” gets us… well, it gets us with the most expensive taxpayer bailout in US History. And we keep electing these jokers. It’s just a matter of time before Medicare, Medicade, and Social Security meet the same fate, Folks… let’s not let “concerned” democrats ruin our economy again.

Reading Obama…

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So Obama gave this speech in Berlin… here’s exactly what I thought when reading through it… you won’t get a clearer picture in to my mind than this folks…

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

YO, Germans! Don’t worry, I’m not a hard-core American Exceptionalist… we’re cooo… and I totally would have made this speech even if I weren’t a candidate for president… nobody would have came to hear me… but I totally would have done it… my candidacy had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Just a normal citizen… making a speech… right up.

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

By the way, I’m black (didn’t know if you knew that, so I thought I’d mention it)… and I’ve got European blood in my family… sort of… fyi.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I’m here.

Well, actually, I’m kind of hear for campaign purposes… to prove I’m no newbie on foreign policy…

And you are here because you too know that yearning.

Or maybe because the 2 most popular German Bands gave free shows… but I’ll just assume you would have came anyway… I AM Barack Obama, after all. I’m a rock Staaarrr!

This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

I’m not too kean on Americans and Iraqi’s struggling to accomplish the same dream though… It’s just so not-cool anymore.

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof…

This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city…

The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.

All this talk though about radical Islam taking over the Middle East and Europe…. OVERRATED.

**editors note** Obama, you IDOT… you don’t see the same threat Radical Islam posed and the incredible DANGER posed by retreating from Iraq??? How on earth can you use this analogy without grave self-reflection on YOUR Iraq policy positions–policies which would have left Iraq and the Middle East in the very thralls of it’s OWN civil war???? You think retreat from Berlin would have been a disaster but from Iraq would have been the RIGHT THING???? You’re KIDDING me, right!???

And that’s when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.

The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies…

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning.

It wasn’t the 300 tons of food and supplies flown into the country EVERY DAY by British and American servicemen that kept the flame of hope burning… no, it was the people of Berlin–flaming that flame of hope with their own scrap wood they burned to stay warm….

The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. “There is only one possibility,” he said. “For us to stand together united until this battle is won… The people of Berlin have spoken.

Pope John Paul the Second? President Regan’s economic and military buildup plan and his “tear down this wall” speech? Pleeeassee… those people were barely involved with the fall of the Berlin wall! ANY historian will tell you it was the people and Mayor of Berlin that caused the wall to fall.

We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin

Don’t look at Iraq though… or America for OUR role in “keeping the flame of hope burning”…whatever you do… DON’T LOOK. Because when all is said and done… America just is far more flawed than Germany on these important issues of human freedom…

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