Monday, November 30, 2009

Obama and Afghanistan

Obama famously remarked that he was running for President not just to end the war in Iraq but to change the mind-set that got the nation mired in that conflict in the first place.
That goal will be severely impaired by a significant increase in troop levels for Afghanistan, which Obama seems all but certain to announce tomorrow.
Sending from 30,000 to 40,000 troops to that tumultuous nation will likely wreak havoc on Obama.

In August, National Intelligence Council, Chairman John Brennan, declared that under Obama, "the fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining - indeed, distorting - our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies."
But the military commitment endorsed by President Obama would have the reverse effect - officially making stabilization in Afghanistan and the war against Al Qaedaa and the Taliban the President's top priority.


And if the administration requests $100 billion a year for the war in Afghanistan, in the face of looming budget deficits, what are the chances Congress will loosen its purse strings further for that.

Finally, Obama and his advisers will be pressed in devoting their attention and political capital to other foreign policy matters, whether it's pushing for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, organizing an international coalition to confront the Iranian nuclear program.
It's never easy for Presidents and their advisers to proverbially "walk and chew gum at the same time," and having 100,000 troops in Afghanistan will make it that much harder.
But above all, Obama's goal of changing America's mind-set from the belief that there is a military solution to every national security challenge will be dealt a defining and perhaps fatal blow - and in the end, that is probably the most important reason why troop levels in Afghanistan matter and why the President should think twice.
The opportunity costs will be profound, and Obama will risk becoming the one thing he likely did not want to be: a war President.
As he prepares to announce a decision that will define his presidency, Obama would be wise to consider the words of one of his predecessors in the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson who after leaving office told a biographer, "History provided too many cases where the sound of the bugle put an immediate end to the hopes and dreams of the best reformers." No doubt Obama knows what ultimately happened to Johnson's policy agenda - and his presidency.

Makes me want to vomit.

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
The most surprising and disappointing aspect of our politics is how little pushback there has been against the vile, extremist rhetoric that has characterized such a large part of the anti-Obama movement. President Obama's White House has largely ignored those accusing him of "fascism" and "communism," presumably believing that restraint in defense of dignity is no vice.

Republican politicians, worried about future primary fights, have been reluctant to pick a fight with a radical right that seems to be the most energized section of their party. Their "moderation" has consisted of a non-benign neglect of the extremists and of accusing the president merely of "socialism."  Jim Leach spent 30 years as a Republican member of Congress who went his own way. If this meant standing almost alone against his caucus, he was content to do so.

Leach lost his Iowa seat in the 2006 Democratic tide. He turned to academia, not the lobbying trade favored by so many defeated politicians, and in 2008 engaged in the ultimate act of a maverick (a real one) by becoming a Republican for Obama. The new president in turn appointed Leach chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"Little is more important for the world's leading democracy in this change-intensive century," Leach argued, "than establishing an ethos of thoughtfulness and decency of expression in the public square.

"If we don't try to understand and respect others, how can we expect them to respect us, our values and our way of life?" But our own political practice belies anything remotely like "civility," a word that Leach has as much a right to use as anyone in public life.

"It is particularly difficult not to be concerned about American public manners and the discordant rhetoric of our politics," he declared. "Words reflect emotion as well as meaning. They clarify -- or cloud -- thought and energize action, sometimes bringing out the better angels in our nature, sometimes lesser instincts." But what are we doing in this great democracy? "Public officials," Leach observed, "are being labeled 'fascist' or 'communist.'

And more bizarrely, significant public figures have toyed with hints of history-blind radicalism -- the notion of 'secession.' " This last is a reference to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's effort to ride to reelection by invoking a concept that we thought had been discredited in 1865.
"There is, after all, a difference between holding a particular tax or spending or health-care view," he said, "and asserting that an American who supports another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an 'ism' of hate that encompasses gulags and concentration camps. One framework of thought defines rival ideas; the other, enemies." As a result, "citizens of various philosophical persuasions are reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for modern-day democratic governance."

Leach still has a lot of the old moderate Republican in him, and he is critical of a political system that, by creating so many safe one-party seats, has produced strong incentives for politicians "to remain firmly positioned far from the center." He adds: "Institutional polarization is the inevitable result." That's true, too, especially in the GOP.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

ol' sara p. has been examining the 'heat up of the globe' since we used many meteorologists in the past trying to figure smelter emission correlations with particulates in Tucson & Phoenix. Turned out that the best correlation was "double stamp day"! you youngsters probably don't remember that green stamp marketing effort. anyway, double stamp day was tuesday in tucson & tours in phoenix. accordingly, that was the period particulate emissions was highest for each city, respectively. the particulate source was autos; not copper smelters. we won the science but lost the war and shut all the smelters down.
which brings ol' sara to the 'global warming' debate. if some of you have the time (10 minutes), google "unstoppable solar cycles' on youtube. not all the answers, but something to THINK about rather than RANT about.

Saturday, November 28, 2009


This cartoon sent by Sara P is an example of how Conservativism is not monolithic.  Banks are the wellspring of Capitalism, says I.

Of course Terry loved it mucho.

Damn Deficits, Press Ahead On Health Care

By MICHAEL BARONE Double-digit. That hyphenated adjective has been used most often recently to describe October's 10.2% unemployment rate. But it can also be used to describe the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product.

In the fiscal year just ended, federal spending was nearly 25% of GDP, while federal revenues slipped below 15% because of the financial crisis and recession. We have not seen a budget deficit of this magnitude since World War II, which surely was a greater challenge than recent economic troubles.

Apologists for the Obama administration argue that some 2009 spending, like that on financial bailouts, is nonrecurring. True, but as the Congressional Budget Office has reported, the trajectory of administration spending and revenue is pushing the annual deficit toward $1,000,000,000,000 — that's $1 trillion — for the next decade.

Congressional Democrats' health care bills threaten to add to that. The bill currently before the Senate is advertised as costing less than $1 trillion. But significant spending doesn't kick in till 2014 and over the ensuing 10 years adds up to $1.8 trillion, nearly double that.

Thanks to current low interest rates, servicing the debt costs the government only $200 million this year. But the White House estimates that debt service will exceed $700 billion in 2019.

"In a few years," editorializes the Economist, "the AAA rating of Treasury bonds, the world's most important security, could be in jeopardy."

It's not only Republicans who decry this prospect. Examining the Democrats' health care proposals, William Galston, domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, writes, "We're already facing an unsustainable fiscal future."

Looking further ahead, Scott Winship notes in the Progressive Policy Institute's progressivefix.com blog that federal spending is on course to exceed 40% of GDP because of scheduled spending on entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — within the lifetime of today's children. Yet the congressional Democrats who are pressing to expand federal health care spending do not seem much fazed by the prospect that, as Winship writes, "the level of taxation it would require to meet projected spending needs is far higher than anything the country has ever seen-slash-tolerated."

Which suggests that, at least for some Democrats, huge looming budget deficits are not a bug but a feature. Just as Ronald Reagan hoped that cutting taxes would force politicians to cut spending, these Democrats hope that increasing spending will force politicians to increase taxes to levels common in Western Europe. Never mind that those economies have proved more sluggish and less creative than ours over the long haul.

Again, from The Nation

These crazy people just make me laugh.  Except, this is how Terry really thinks the world should be run.

The Unemployed Philosophers Guild came into being in the last decades of the 20th century, when two brothers found their inner creativity in the midst of a dwindling academic job market.



With products like the Global Warming Mug and Obamamints, and dolls and finger puppets in the likeness of artists, philosophers, writers, and historical figures, UPG has stayed loyal to its ideals while proving that it is possible to make a living selling funny and smart products to funny and smart people.


A portion of all our proceeds regularly go towards progressive causes. Now, 50% of revenue from UPG orders placed via this link will go to the Nation.

Knock knock....who's there...Its Mr. What the hell are you doing home, get up, get off your ass and go find a real job you loser.

Karl Rove

After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.
Eureka!

Well, almost. What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

An honest appraisal of the nation's finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card. In February, Mr. Obama's budget plan for the next decade projected that revenues would equal about 18% of GDP while spending would jump to 24% of GDP, up from its post World War II average of 21%. Annual deficits of about 6% of GDP were projected for years to come.

When Mr. Obama was sworn into office the federal deficit for this year stood at $422 billion. At the end of October, it stood at $1.42 trillion. The total national debt also soared to $7.5 trillion at the end of last month, up from $6.3 trillion shortly after Inauguration Day.

This spending has been matched by a decline in the president's poll numbers. This week, Gallup found that his job approval rating slipped below 50%. Last March, Americans approved of Mr. Obama's handling of the deficit by a 52% to 43% margin in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. By October, his standing had flipped in the same poll, with 45% approving and 51% disapproving.

E-mails Don't Prove Warming is a Fraud... Yes they do!

By Eugene Robinson
WASHINGTON -- Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week -- portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories -- does not prove that global warming is a fraud.  Really?  They used limited data and won't tolerate dissent but should be believed because they are sooo good?

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. You think so? Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real -- a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there's much about the climate they still don't know.  And it is not getting warmer, always that tricky little problem.

Here's what happened: Someone hacked into the servers at one of the leading academic centers in the field and filched a trove of e-mails and documents.

To plot temperatures going back hundreds or thousands of years -- long before anyone was taking measurements -- you need a set of data that can serve as an accurate proxy. The width of tree rings correlates well with observed temperature readings, and extrapolating that correlation into the past yields the familiar "hockey stick" graph -- fairly level temperatures for eons, followed by a sharp incline beginning around 1900. This is attributed to human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting increase in heat-trapping atmospheric carbon dioxide.

But beginning around 1960, tree-ring data diverges from observed temperatures. Skeptics say this calls into question whether tree-ring data is valid for earlier periods on the flat portion of the hockey stick -- say, 500 or 1,000 years ago. Jones and others acknowledge they don't know what the divergence means, but they point to actual temperatures: It's warmer now than it was 100 years ago.  Except it is not.

Another e-mail -- from Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. -- is even more heartening to the skeptics. Trenberth wrote last month of the unusually cool autumn that Colorado was experiencing, and went on: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

He appears to be conceding skeptics' claim that over the past decade there has been no observed warming. In truth, though, that wouldn't be much of a concession. At issue is the long-term trend, and one would expect anomalous blips from time to time.  You cannot be at  both a tipping point (or "in the balance") and a blip at the same time.

From my reading, the most damning e-mails are those in which scientists seem to be trying to squelch dissent from climate change orthodoxy -- threatening to withhold papers from journals if they publish the work of naysayers, vowing to keep skeptical research out of the official U.N.-sponsored report on climate change.  Really?  Its bad that they are trying to squelch dissent about an issue they describe as "settled" the cure for which would send man's progress back many years?  No kidding!

The fact is that climate science is fiendishly hard because of the enormous number of variables that interact in ways no one fully understands. Scientists should welcome contrarian views from respected colleagues, not try to squelch them. They should admit what they don't know.

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced each other, but so far they haven't gotten through to the vanishing polar ice.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

well, ol' sara says "happy Thanksgivin' to A L L! even those of you of a different mind set. we are blessed indeed.

sara's bettin' that the celebration may not be the same in ol' detroit...as the muslims say 'what's a pilgrim?'

HOW IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURALISM DESTROYED DETROIT

By Frosty Wooldridge October 5, 2009 _NewsWithViews.com_ (http://newswithviews.com/)

For 15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan. I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs
, and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash everywhere! Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it and ignored it.

Tens of thousands and, then, hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps! With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10 and in once case, one woman birthed 24 kids as reported by the Detroit Free Press-all on American taxpayer dollars. A new child meant a new car payment, new TV and whatever mom wanted.

I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson's "Great Society" flourish in Detroit . If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing.


Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroitdown to its knees. He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence and arrogance. As a black man, he said, "I am the MFIC." The IC meant 'in charge'. You can figure out the rest.

Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.


What happens?

Happy Turkey day to all!


Dear Terry, Crazy Rich and all the deny war crowd (the term anti war was pointedly not used).

Please answer this: What happens if, as is your desire, we pull out and just leave Afghanistan?

We were attacked on 9-11 by a group which fermented in Afghanistan. That group remains and remains hostile to our country.

So, let's say we carry out your wishes and leave (and all Americans therefore avoid the war tax proposed by the liberals in the house of Rep.) .

What happens?

Obama Nice Guy Act Isn't Working!

When even the European Press thinks he's weak - there is a problem. The comparisons to Jimmy Carter are overwhelming. This is what happens when you give this job to a guy who was in the Illinois state legislature only a short time, was a US Senator for 142 days, previously a street organizer and strongly believes in Sal Alinsky. He is in way over his head.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Pictures can say a lot

  After Ft. Hood
   "O" in GQ, held by "O"

From Sara P

We have a new blogger, an other Mark

Let's call him Motor Car Mark.  He is much like myself and brother Mark R. (who has rejoined the effort!-yea!) and is Conservative.  He is one of those guys who sends lots of things.  Here is one of them.  Soon, as Rich and Crazy Rich and Terry argues with him, usually over what the follows obviously says, but they will deny , debate will ensue.  I must tell you Motor Car Mark (or what ever blog name you should chose), getting a straight answer out of these guys is harder than getting a straight forward new car price quote (tee hee hee).

WSJ  Preparing to write about yesterday's downward revision in third-quarter GDP, we were tempted to say the Obama Administration has hit a speed-bump on its promised exit out of the recession. But it is the American economy that has hit a speed bump, and on the evidence of the policy mix emerging now from Democratic Washington, the road ahead for the economy is bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Other than a few lucky banks, few seem be enjoying the ride.


What last month had appeared to be third-quarter growth of 3.5% in gross domestic product turns out to have been a more modest 2.8%. Consumer spending was pared back to 2.9% from 3.4%. The cash-for-clunkers subsidy produced fewer new-vehicle purchases than first estimated. In short, we aren't getting much bang for our $787 billion stimulus bucks. But you already knew that.

The frustrated Congressional Democrats who designed and enacted the stimulus seem more surprised, and they are now circling the wagons and starting to look for someone else to blame.  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Crazy Rich says:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/224178

He sent me the above link.  The above link is an interview with Mr. Hansen about global warming.  The interview, done by a magazine which just put Ms. Palin on the cover in a jogging suit is superficial at best.  It does portray a Progressive man, an anti buisness man who will tolerate no dissent.  Usual Liberal stuff.

Look Rich, if you are going to deny we are at war despite multiple attacks, please understand that I do not want to end our way of life over theory which resists scientific evaluation.

The recent string of E-mails do cast doubt on the honesty of the climate change crowd.

And not once have any of you jokers answered the question (too hard I guess) if we truly are at a tipping point, why not nuclear?

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Obama Doesn't "Get" the Military He Commands

http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2009/11/why_obama_doesn.html

This is a must read and certainly partially explains the "dithering".

The reliabilty of Al Gore

The AGW theory scam artist Al Gore was on Conan O'Brien's show the other day.


Conan: Now, what about ... you talk in the book about geothermal energy ...
Al: Yeah, yeah.
Conan: and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that's generated from the core of the earth ...
Al: Yeah.
Conan: ... to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
Al: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy -- when they think about it at all -- in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot ...

It is a remarkable fact that Al Gore has had a significant influence on public policy relating to science when he is, in fact, utterly uneducated in scientific matters and is of very limited intelligence. But then again we have a President who was a Senator for less than two years, has never had a real job besides "community organizer" and is vastly short of the experience necessary to be the POTUS. Of course he was the Editor of the Harvard Law Review. By the way how many Editors of the Harvard Law Review have there been over the last 100 years and how many of them have been the POTUS? If this is the measuring stick than there should be quite a few, like 20 or so.

GET IT DONE

We need better leaders, and we need better citizens who will convey to our leaders (Congress, President) that they are ready sacrifice if necessary, yes pay higher taxes, if that is what is needed to fix this country.
Do not punish politicians who ask us to do hard things.
If we had a draft in this country I assure you we would not be in Iraq, or Afghanistan. To get anything done in this country you have to have 1,000 page bills so the dishonest that look for loopholes can't use the bill to further their pocketbooks. Gerrymandering in this country means politicians can now choose their own voters, term limits are unconstitutional but the President is term limited. This is where we need courageous leaders. Obama was a anti Bush, anti War vote that is now changing our social programs. I hope and pray the next election all incumbents are voted out, and we get some straight talk from our elected officials that we citizens need to buck and sacrifice yes pay more taxes and let's not leave this problem to our children. I know this upsets the conservative crowd but let's not point fingers at the past Obama and Bush, let's in the words of Gary Chapman "Let's get it done".

The Great Global Warming Scam

Many people wiser than I have made the statement "follow the money". Given the undisputable fact that Al Gore has banked about a billion dollars shilling this cause and so many VCs have huge investments in companies which have been started in response to the "Global Warming Problem" a wise person would start looking with some scepticism towards much of the arguments being presented for Global Warming based on the fact that Global temperatures have NOT increased over the last ten years. We also must take into account how many scientists are feeding at the pig trough of scientific funding based on the existence of Global Warming due to the "scare factor" being presented of Global Doom. Well now the Scam has been blown wide open.

Someone hacked into a computer at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre, one of the main centers of anthropogenic global warming research. The hacker downloaded over 200 megabytes of data from the server, consisting of around 1,000 emails and a variety of other documents. He uploaded them to an FTP server, where they were available to the public, apparently, for only a few hours.

Before the documents disappeared from that location, several people had downloaded them and posted them in other locations. I downloaded all of the material earlier today and have begun to review it. The emails are stunning. They are authored by many of the leading figures in the global warming movement: Michael Mann, James Hansen, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Stephen Schneider, and others. They are remarkably candid; these individuals talk to each other with the knowledge that they are among friends. http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/leaked-foia-files-62-mb-of-gold/

The e-mails uploaded suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for. Just over a month ago, on September 28, 2009, Tom Wigley wrote to Phil Jones of the Hadley Centre about his efforts to get the right-sized "blip" in temperatures of the 1940s:
"Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip."
"I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this."
"It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with "why the blip"."
This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the "science" up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction.
Left-wing politics is a common theme of the emails. Thus, Michael Mann, author of the notorious "hockey stick" hoax, attacked those who don't buy the man-made global warming (AGW) theory on September 30, 2009:
"Its part of the attack of the corporate-funded attack machine, i.e. its a direct and highly intended outcome of a highly orchestrated, heavily-funded corporate attack campaign. We saw it over the summer w/ the health insurance industry trying to defeat Obama's health plan, we'll see it now as the U.S. Senate moves on to focus on the cap & trade bill that passed congress this summer. "
This sort of paranoid thinking is odd, since the vast majority of the money in climate science is on the pro-global warming side. Among themselves, the pro-AGW scientists make no bones about their desire to get their hands on some of that cash. Thus, a British scientist wrote last month:
"How should I respond to the below? [an article questioning AGW theory] (I'm in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measurments here in the UK - looking promising, so the last thing I need is news articles calling into question (again) observed temperature increases--"

No wonder pro-global warming scientists are dogmatically committed to their theory, no matter what the data say: their livelihoods, as well as their professional reputations, depend on it. As a result, they conduct themselves like a secret cabal. Outsiders--that is to say, independent thinkers--are viewed with suspicion. One of the most striking emails is from Michael Mann to Phil Jones. It replies to an email from Jones that was copied to another scientist named Andy, relating to a recent fiasco in which tree ring research that was a basis for the U.N.'s IPCC report on global warming proved to be inaccurate if not fraudulent. Mann included this postscript in his reply:
"p.s. be a bit careful about what information you send to Andy and what emails you copy him in on. He's not as predictable as we'd like"
A world in which those who are "not as predictable as we'd like" are viewed with suspicion is a world of politics, not science.

So why should a country in the midst of a terrible economic crisis with unemploymeny over 10% want to get involved with "Cap and Trade policies" which would more than likely have a large negative impact on the US economy even entertain thoughts about this given the fact that the whole AGW theory is mostly backed up by bogus scientific articles like the afore mentioned "Hockey Stick Temperature Graph" or the equally bogus cherry picked data about Tree rings.

You liberals out there continually harangue about Wall Street and bonuses yet you blindly gulp down the Kool Aid of those who seek to get wealthy using bogus data that would more than likely cause more damage to the already anemic US economy. It will be very interesting to watch how the main stream media keeps a lid on this news and how liberals attempt to move the focus away from the actual fact that AGW theory scientists are bending the data in scientific publications and to the people who hacked this gold vein of information.
hey ol' sara been trying to 'kick start' the economy with some deficit spending (hard to get a loan, however, with those banks using the TARP money to buy other banks). anyhow, I bought this truck and what a deal!
I bought a new GMC Sierra and returned it to the dealer yesterday because I couldn't get the radio to work.
The salesman explained that the radio was voice activated.
'Nelson,' the salesman said to the radio.
The radio replied, 'Ricky or Willie?'
'Willie!' he continued and 'On The Road Again' came from the speakers.
Then he said, 'Ray Charles!' and in an instant ' Georgia On My Mind' replaced Willie Nelson.
I drove away happy, and for the next few days, every time I'd say, 'Beethoven,' I'd get beautiful classical music, and if I said, 'Beatles,' I'd get one of their awesome songs.
Yesterday, some guy ran a red light and nearly creamed my new truck, but I swerved in time to avoid him. I yelled, 'Ass Hole!'
Immediately the radio responded with, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States ."
is this cool, or what???
Health Care: The closer the Democratic Congress' radical health package gets to enactment, the less popular it becomes. The American people smell a rat.

'It's not going to be a perfect bill, but it's going to be a very important starting point," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said on CNN over the weekend after 60 senators voted to open debate on radically transforming the U.S. health care system. That fact is what is increasingly spooking the American people, as well it should, is: Where will this massively expensive "starting point" lead us?

The Democrats' health care revolution, which right now looks like it will include a government-run option that could cripple the health insurance industry, is sinking in approval. The newest Rasmussen poll finds public support down to 38% — falling for the first time below 41%. Of the 56% who now oppose the plan, 43% are "strongly opposed." Among senior citizens, 60% are against it.


Monday, November 23, 2009

WSJ

The flap over breast cancer screening has provided a fascinating insight into the political future of ObamaCare. Specifically, the political left supports such medical rationing even as it disavows that any such thing is happening.


No sooner had the Health and Human Services Department's U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended against mammography for women under 50 than Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rushed to say don't worry. The decision had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women," she said, promising that no policies would change. New Jersey's Frank Pallone vowed to hold hearings, and Senator Dick Durbin leveled the gravest charge Democrats can make: The task force was "appointed by President Bush."

The political duck-and-cover was also on display in that vanguard of ObamaCare known as the New York Times, which ran at least four much-ado-about-nothing items even as it endorsed the reduced screening. On the same day as an editorial and op-ed, a front-page "news analysis" lectured that what the public really needs is "a transformational shift in thinking" about the "evidence-based" medical future that the mammogram decision portends. Yes, and no doubt the Times will tell us what "evidence" to follow.

What's really going on here is that the left knows its designs will require political rationing of care, but it doesn't want the public to figure this out until ObamaCare passes. Then it will begin the campaign to instruct the rest of us that we must follow the guidance of Princeton professors about what medical care we can receive. Americans will simply have to accept that the price of government-run health care in the name of redistributive justice is that patients and their doctors must bow to the superior wisdom of HHS task forces.


Just don't admit it until after the White House signing ceremony.

Not A Trial, A Terrorist Soapbox

IBD
Justice: Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try five 9/11 plotters by a civilian court in New York rather than a military tribunal at Gitmo is already paying dividends — for the terrorists.

The five terror suspects want to use their "not guilty" pleas as a chance to voice their hate-filled beliefs and grievances against the West. In short, we're giving them a prime-time soapbox in the most important city on Earth from which to spout their hate and recruit new adherents to their murderous cause.

We know this because Scott Fenstermaker, the attorney for terrorist suspect Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, says his client plans to "explain what happened and why they did it."

That is, they'll admit to doing it even while pleading not guilty, just so they can propagandize on behalf of their cause. In doing so, they not only will torture the families of the 3,000 people murdered on 9/11 with their lack of remorse. They will also get to make the case for jihad to a lot of sick minds around the world.

Speaking of Global Warming, I mean cooling, no really warming... I'm confused.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Crazy Rich Writes

An Inconvenient Truth” is on the science channel .. 764 Cox watch it and let me know if the “left” made it up…if you have gonads


RM

Rich, you are wonderful but crazy.  I don't know what parts were made up!  I watched the movie a long time ago and yes it seems like there is more carbon in the air.
 
OK, now you started this so, and try really hard to stay focused, answer these babies.
 
How come it is not getting warmer?  Honestly, it is a big part of this,,,you know...global warming, to get...warmer and apparently it is not.
 
OK, so you say, hey it might...OK, you got some concerns and while I think they are wrong (but...see, and pay attention here...I am willing to look at the subject scientifically) but you and the left are asking for a BIG change based on your theories.
 
So...now this will be really hard...answer these questions, and before you do, let me address yours, yes increased CO2 seems to be happening and it may have an adverse effect.  Not sure if it is enough to change a big planets global patterns, but it might.
 
Having said that...don't you think a legitimate criticism of your side is it proposing a big solution, unevenly enforced, with terrible negative economic consequences and a huge chance for corruption?  This for a theory in debate.
 
Now, before you go all postal, address my concerns.  Honestly should not the planet be getting warmer? It is not.  If it is so important, should we not use nuclear power?  You won't let us.  Should not the guidelines be appied to all societies.  They are not.  Lastly, the carbon credits, are they not the most potenially corruptable concept ever?  They are like MBS on steriods.
 
I don't need to see the film, you need to explain the film

LIBERAL AND LEFT WING

Liberalism is a broad concern with human liberty. It is a belief that individual decision-making is important and that, insofar as it is possible, people should be free to control their own lives. Liberals tend to believe that the only good reason for coercing a person - preventing them from taking a course of action - is to protect the rights of others.
Liberalism rejects the notion that we need to be commanded from above by wiser, cleverer, richer, more powerful, more articulate or more organized groups; instead, liberalism favours free association and voluntary arrangements wherever possible.
'Left' is a broad political term which has changed in meaning over the period of its use. I think it's fair to characterise 'left-wing' as 'concerned about improving the conditions of those who are suffering most from the present arrangement of society'. Yes, that's a long-winded way of saying it, but it's better to be long-winded than to leave anything open to interpretation.
So, a left-wing perspective on economic issues might involve concern about poverty, or the status of mistreated workers, or the effects of imbalances of power on those with the least power to control their own lives.
Left-wingers are primarily concerned with promoting the interests of the weak.

Saturday morning funnies


Friday, November 20, 2009

Its Starting

Angry Congress lashes out at Obama  ECONOMIC WOES TAKING A TOLL By Brady Dennis, Zachary A. Goldfarb and Neil Irwin  Washington Post Staff Writer

Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration.
Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home. They also underscored the stiff headwinds that the administration faces as it pushes to enact sweeping changes to the financial regulatory system while also trying to create jobs for ordinary Americans.
President Obama's allies in the Congressional Black Caucus, exasperated by the administration's handling of the economy, unexpectedly blocked one his top priorities, using a legislative maneuver to postpone the approval of financial reform legislation by a key House committee.
Two buildings away, at a session of the Joint Economic Committee, Republicans escalated their attacks on Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, including a call for his resignation.
"Conservatives agree that as point person, you failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.). "For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?"
Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.) took a different tack. "I don't think that you should be fired," he told Geithner. "I thought you should have never been hired."
Even Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a friend of the administration, suggested that Geithner had been inconsistent in addressing China's practice of keeping its currency low against the dollar.

And Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday on MSNBC that he thinks Geithner should step down, pointing to his handling of the aftermath of American International Group's meltdown.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Exactly

Help Your President — Kill ObamaCare!

By Larry Elder
The then-Republican-controlled Congress stopped President Bill Clinton from passing HillaryCare. People soon forgot about his "failure" and re-elected him by a larger margin than he received for his first term. Republicans also blocked his first-term attempt to pass a multibillion-dollar "economic stimulus package."

Because of Republican pressure or support, Clinton signed measures unpopular with his base — the Nafta and GATT trade agreements, a reduction in capital gains taxes (as part of a larger budget compromise) and 1996's welfare reform act, which, for the first time, refused recipients more money if they had additional children and imposed benefit time limits. Many congressional Democrats opposed these measures.

No... I do not believe this

But making the wacky right wing mad is just so much fun.



Meet President Bush...

What is about to happen? The man on the left appears to be contemplating ingress and is very pleased about his prospects. The man on the right appears to be about to do his duty in what has become routine. What with the man in the middle? He seems to be growing impatient. "Can't these guys hurry it up?"

No...I do not believe this

But making the wacky left mad is just so much fun.  Does anybody?

And...before you start with the vast right wing conspiracy stuff, please document how you stood up to
Dan Rather when he asserted that blatantly false documents should be investigated because...I'm not really sure how he justified such a ludicrous idea.

Meet the Soetoros



Indonesia
Left to Right:


Lolo Soetoro, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro,baby Maya Soetoro, and 9 year old Barry Soetoro

This registration document, made available on Jan. 24, 2007, by the Fransiskus Assisi school in Jakarta , Indonesia , shows the registration of Barack Obama under the name Barry Soetoro made by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro.



Name: Barry Soetoro
Religion: ..... Islam
Nationality: ..... Indonesian
How did little INDONESIAN, Barry Soetoro, (A.K.A. Barack Obama) get around the issue of nationality to become president?
Someone who tells lies is a L __ __ r?
PART 2:
In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama's qualifications for the presidency, the group "Americans for Freedom of Information" has released copies of President Obama's college transcripts from Occidental College .
Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school.
The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California .
The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program.
To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship.
This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama's detractors have been seeking.
Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya and there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship, this is looking pretty grim.
The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama's legitimacy and qualification to serve as president. When reached for comment in London , where he has been in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama smiled but refused comment on the issue.

Britain 's Daily Mail has also carried the story in a front-page article titled, "Obama Eligibility Questioned," leading some to speculate that the story may overshadow economic issues on Obama's first official visit to the U.K.
In a related matter, under growing pressure from several groups, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama's legal eligibility to serve as President in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey ...This lawsuit claims Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president.
Donofrio's case is just one of 18 suits brought by citizens demanding proof of Obama's citizenship or qualifications to serve as president.
Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama's campaign spending.
This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records.
Mr. Kreep indicated that the investigation is still on-going but that the final report will be provided to the  U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder. Mr. Holder has refused to comment on the matter.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009



How is that Hope and Change working for you!

The housing market dropped off a cliff in October, as the original Nov. 30th expiration date for the first-time home buyers tax credit approached, according to the Housing Market Monitor of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Add to that the 6.25% 60-day delinquency rate in the third quarter -- 58% above the level of one year ago -- and you've got a recipe for housing disaster: more foreclosures, slower sales and ultimately a greater decline in house prices.


"With unemployment virtually certain to remain high well into next year, there is little prospect for any sizable drop in foreclosures".

Note: 11-4-2012, going back to his roots, President "O" spoke today at the local ACORN office. Facing certain defeat tomorrow, he commented that the continuing lack of recovery as a result of the "Bush Years" had doomed his presidency. "As the economy continued to deteriorate, we had to nationalize all major industries" he stated. Despite continuing unemployment of 15% and the loss of tax revenue from the exodus of millions of the "wealthy", President "O" continues to press his case that "its just not my fault". Rich Baxter, special assistant to the President, noted that not enough credit is being given for the management of foreign affairs despite the continued indecision regarding troops in Afghanistan, the several terrorist attacks on NYC after the KSL trial and the implosion of world currency exacerbated by an attempt of merge the governments of Russia, China and the United States.

Any Pretense of Seriousness Has Vanished

The Republicans are fiscal babies
Any pretense of seriousness has long vanished
by Froma Harrop - Nov. 18, 2009 12:00 AM
Providence Journal

Nearly every Republican these days calls for tax cuts and lower deficits - and in the same sentence. Point out that these goals clash; that taxes pay for government and not paying for government causes deficits, the Republican counters, "We must shrink government, instead."

Sure. And you're just the boys to do it.

There hasn't been a balanced budget since the last Democratic administration. During the George W. Bush years of mindless tax-cutting, the national debt doubled, and GOP claims to fiscal rectitude became a bizarre joke. The last fig leaf fell off this summer when Republicans demagogued efforts to save over $100 billion by ending subsidies for the private Medicare Advantage health plans.

Here was the lowest-hanging fruit in the fastest-growing government program. It was something most Medicare beneficiaries would barely notice was gone, yet Republicans hollered that Democrats were pulling the plug on grandma.

That dashed any residual Republican pretenses that Bush had led them astray on spending, and a lesson was learned. Clearly, the GOP is not changing a thing.

Bruce Bartlett, an economist in Ronald Reagan's Treasury Department, has been criticizing such inconsistencies for years. Republicans could have embraced his 2006 book, "Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," as evidence that they truly regretted the fiscal wreckage of the Bush years. Instead, they turned Bartlett into a Republican pariah.

Bartlett has just come out with another book, "The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward." It has received an equally chilly reception from the right-wing media and associated think tanks. That is, they're making no mention of it.

I asked Bartlett whether he feels beaten up by former fellow Republicans. (He's now an independent.) No, he said, "one of the funny things since 'Imposter' came out is the refusal of people on the right to even debate me."

One can't entirely blame them for trying to smother his book sales.

Democrats would be hard-pressed to find better talking points anywhere else - though Bartlett does find fault with them, too.

Bartlett's main point is that there's almost no place to cut domestic discretionary spending. Subtract money going for defense, entitlements (such as Medicare) and payments on the debt, and there's precious little left. Domestic discretionary spending in fiscal 2008 last year totaled $485 billion, while the deficit was $459 billion. You would have had to kill nearly every domestic program to balance the budget. That would have meant nothing for education, agriculture, housing, border patrols, the FBI, highways.

Taxes must go up, and on that subject, Bartlett takes issue with the current president.

"You have to look at some other broad-based revenue raising," he said, "but then you run up against the problem that (President Barack) Obama has made the promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $200,000." He deems that approach "irresponsible." The rich can't bear all the costs of government.

The answer is a value-added tax, which is basically a national sales tax. The VAT would tax consumption, rather than income, and at low cost to economic growth. Europeans use a VAT to pay for their cushy benefits.

Bartlett thinks Congress should commit itself to a number, say $1 trillion, for deficit savings over 10 years. Then, it should ask a commission to find a third of that money from higher revenues, a third from entitlement cuts and a third from discretionary spending.

Welcome to the world of grownups, where tax cuts don't magically pay for themselves - and where middle-class people must pay more for middle-class benefits.

When it comes to addressing deficits, Democrats may be lax adolescents, but Republicans are total babies.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Sarah was right

What we are talking about is a government panel limiting evaluation based on testing not being "good enough" to justify the subsequent negative biopsy's. And I am sure they were acting on good faith.

Can any reasonable person not interpret this as a cost analysis that a lot of negative mammogram's do not justify the occasional positive one (which will undeniably save lives).

This is what will happen when government controls YOUR health care.

Sarah was right, this is just a "mild" death panel.

A panel that sets the government's policy on prevention overturned some longstanding guidelines about testing for breast cancer. It said women should get mammograms every other year instead of annually.



The panel also recommended against self-examinations and said it wasn't sure it was worthwhile for women older than 74 to have mammograms. The guidelines are aimed at preventing wrong diagnoses and unnecessary treatment.

A Tough Call for the Thoughtful

For the past several weeks, the usual suspects have been attacking President Obama for not making a decision on troop levels in Afghanistan quickly enough for their warmongering taste. And despite the fact that whatever the ultimate decision is, additional troops won't be deployed until next spring, they continue to insist that a decision must be made now.
Here are just a few examples from the WMD-mushroom cloud-cakewalk-in-Iraq crowd: we have the "dithering" seven deferments Dick Cheney suddenly concerned about our troops being in danger.
John "President Wannabe" McCain still wanting to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb something, and Charles Krauthammer who has taken it upon himself to decide how a president must act -- which would presumably fall somewhere between himself and Attila the Hun.
And in a class(less) by himself is Bill Kristol the lead cheerleader for the war in Iraq, who unbelievably says:
... what the White House thinks in the sense that they think it's an excrutiating decision, it's very tough. I think that's pathetic ... why is this a tough call?
Why is this a tough call? As we have learned over the past six years, there are thousands of reasons.

Devastating

From ABC News:

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.


There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

Told you so!

Let's do a little math and double check me here, my calculator does not go this high.

Even if the lying cheats were correct (which they are not).  $800,000,000,000/600,000 jobs is 1.3 Mil per job.  Good high paying union government jobs, which in reality do not exist!

Monday, November 16, 2009

The Release!

First let me say that I hope she runs.  Not because I think she will win the nomination nor am I free of concerns but...she draws attention and does speak of important free market principles.  It should also be said, that were she not attractive, we would not know her name. 

One of the biggest mistakes of the failed McCain campaign—and there was no shortage of them—was its handling of Mrs. Palin. Her criticisms of the campaign's treatment of her appear prominently in "Going Rogue." But the book contains self-criticisms too, if not as many as there ought to be for a candidate who was ultimately responsible for her own uneven performance.



That said, "Going Rogue" is more a personal memoir than a political one. More than half the book is about Mrs. Palin's life before the 2008 campaign. She discusses her coming of age in the "new frontier" state of Alaska; her personal faith journey; her experiences with marriage and motherhood, including two miscarriages, a special-needs child and a pregnant teenage daughter; and the free-market convictions that have guided her political career. As a politician, she comes across as a prodigious worker capable of mastering complicated issues—not least the energy policies that matter so much to Alaska's economy—and of building bridges to Democrats.
A RESPONSE TO An Open Letter to Mark

Offering a little unsolicited advice.
Don't make personal attacks, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY ADDRESS THE TOPIC, NOT FOR EXAMPLE THAT AN AUTHOR IS BITTER BECAUSE HE IS CONFINED TO A WHEELCHAIR. THAT WOULD BE STUPID. Attack ideas, concepts and actions – not people. (ESPECIALLY THOSE CONFINED TO A WHEELCHAIR-SEEMS...LOW CLASS).
Don't assign motives. I MEAN, HOW CAN YOU SUSPECT FOLKS WHO HAVE PERSUED AN AGENDA PROMOTING AN EVER ENLARGING WELFARE STATE WHICH BRINGS THEM MORE AND MORE POWER. There is no need to divide the country between good and evil. The demonization of political opponents are cynical...AND ALL THAT STUFF I WATCH ON MSNBC WITH THE BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME AND HOW WE WENT TO WAR FOR OIL...NEVERMIND.
Be empathetic. I should be much more frustrated than you are. Today’s Republican Party reminds me of the alcoholic – they will change jobs, move to a different state, ditch their wife, go into therapy, and do whatever it takes to make things better – except quit drinking. AND I AM FRUSTRATED BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REMINDS ME OF THAT DRUG ADDICTED SLUT WHO I WOKE UP WITH THAT WOULD NOT GO AWAY...NO WAIT...WRONG ANOLOGY. After the Bush administration and six years of a GOP Congress, you would think that would end the debate about the tired and failed GOP policy positions – but it hasn't. They all want to criticize spending, even though receipts fell more than spending spiked, in relative terms, during the Bush years. EVEN THOUGH WE CAN NEVER TALK ABOUT THE DOT COME BUST, 9-11, THE RECESSION AT THE START OF THE ADMINISTRATION AND JOB CREATION, THAT JUST WOULD NOT BE HELPFUL. Two wars were started, WITH THE SUPPORT OF BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES but not finished, BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THAT WARS HAVE AN END ON DATE. I MEAN, LOOK HOW WELL AHFGHANASTAN IS DOING NOW! Does the party now recognize that cooperation and traditional alliances are important? AND LOOK HOW WELL THINGS ARE GOING IN NORTH KOREA AND IRAN AND...NEVER MIND. No. They would much rather criticize our new president as he makes his way around the world trying to mend fences and stop nuclear proliferation in this the eleventh hour. They want to continue with the last eight years, it seems, even after the results are in. BOWING WORKS DAMN IT!
terry said...

Best post ever!! thanks Baxter you said what was true and needed. You and I have most always agreed but respect the other side's opinion. No reason to get personal. AND TALK ABOUT SOMEONES WEENIE. By the way they lost, get behind, or get out of the way, is what they told us for 8 years. OR WAS IT, LOWER TAXES, CUT SPENDING, REDUCE THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT, CREATE JOBS AND PROTECT THE HOMELAND WITH POOR EXECUTION?

Time for a Triumvirate?

Watching the Hu/Obama press conference it occurred to me just how much could be accomplished by these two powers. Throw in a third - Russia - and we could effectively "rule the world" for a generation, damaging only the interests of the rogue states. Is it time for a T3?

It is obvious that North Korea survives only at the pleasure of Beijing. Iran's nuclear ambitions could be ended peacefully by only one power - Russia. If the three of us could agree on a few primary goals - big ones - I don't see how anyone could stop us.

Our non-negotiable objective would concern nuclear non-proliferation. Specifically, Iran and North Korean gains would need to be rolled back and both states would need to be verifiably nuclear materials and enrichment free. With the Triumvirate united, we can give each rogue state the opportunity to do this the easy way, or the hard way band back it up without a lot of handwringing. Further, the legitimate nuclear club would remain at 5, with India, Pakistan and Israel stuck in nuclear limbo. Any other nations attempting to join the club would see their efforts promptly shut down through peaceful or military means, as needed. This, in my opinion, is the one sure way to assure that civilization is not brought down through proliferation in the 21st century.

What will the Russians want? No more NATO expansion. Respected sphere of influence in the former Soviet states (except the Baltic provinces, which are now comfortably in the west). A roadmap to eventual full membership in "western civilization" with American support regarding the EU and perhaps even NATO if they meet specific, objective tests concerning democracy and other western institutions. Simply being one of such an exclusive group would probably get the Kremlin's attention. I believe that Russia can be brought into the west and such a power trio would be useful to that end.

What will China want? I think a complete American exit from South Korea if/when North Korea collapses and is reunited with the South. Pyongyang is being propped up by China, as they have their own bellicose right wingers that can't stand the thought of "losing" the Korean War 60+/- years after the last shot was fired. If there were overt assurances of an American exit, Beijing may find a way to accept the collapse of the Kim regime. They could certainly call it a victory domestically if we are packing up and leaving. Hu would not face the same western gloating that Gorbachev did. Meanwhile - Korea would be a stronger bastion of democracy and capitalism (half the country wants us gone now, even with Kim Jong-Il running things up north) and our expensive presence there would no longer be necessary.

China may want a larger piece of the world stage, something that they will be getting anyway due to their relative waxing influence. I think we would need to soften, but not eliminate, the human rights rhetoric (just as Nixon, Reagan and Bush would do when convenient for our interests).

What would Latin America and Africa think? Not much, really. India and Japan would be jealous, but not such that it would have any meaningful consequences. The Middle East would respect the accumulation of power. The Islamofascists would hate such a unified front. The three countries interests are already aligned with respect to terrorism, though petty posturing has prevented more effective unified action. How about those Europeans that drive Hags crazy? I think they too would be jealous, like the Indians and Japanese, but it would amount to no more than Delhi and Toyko's pique. They will still be spending a lot of time consolidating their union and the Euro. I can't think of any Triumvirate policies mentioned above that would upset any continental apple carts. The UN, as an institution, may not be happy but that will only be icing on the cake for Hags.

Whaddaya think?

An Open Letter to Mark

Perhaps you should reconsider your self-exile from this distinguished blog. I’d like to request that you do, while offering a little unsolicited advice.

Don’t make personal attacks. That way, people won’t reply in kind and really make you mad. Attack ideas, concepts and actions – not people. I don’t think half the country is “deranged” for supporting the Democratic Party and their leadership. Millions of Americans do not have a mental disorder. It is possible for bright and honest people to completely disagree with your worldview even after you have made your arguments.

Don’t assign motives. I am no fan of Tom DeLay, George W Bush or Dick Armey. That said, I think they entered public life honorably, to change the country in the way they see fit. The same applies to Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and President Obama. There is no need to divide the country between good and evil. The demonization of political opponents is cynical and for those that believe the overheated rhetoric, ignorant. Neither of your ideological friends or foe are thieves and both care very much for their country. Some of my best friends are Republicans. My dear mother belongs to that anachronistic party. I honestly do not understand the anger or animus that sometimes attends political discussion. Life is too short…

Don’t expect to change minds. We can all shed light on ideas and offer a perspective that the other side might not otherwise see or appreciate. However, I will never be changing your mind, Jim’s, Hags, Riegels or Wenzels. And you will not be changing mine. However, your past postings have offered insight into the thinking of the Republican base and you have made a decent point on occasion.

Be empathetic. I should be much more frustrated than you are. Today’s Republican Party reminds me of the alcoholic – they will change jobs, move to a different state, ditch their wife, go into therapy, and do whatever it takes to make things better – except quit drinking. After the Bush administration and six years of a GOP Congress, you would think that would end the debate about the tired and failed GOP policy positions – but it hasn’t. They all want to criticize spending, even though receipts fell more than spending spiked, in relative terms, during the Bush years. Two wars were started but not finished and two “Axis” enemies made tremendous nuclear progress during the GOP monopoly. Does the party now recognize that cooperation and traditional alliances are important? No. They would much rather criticize our new president as he makes his way around the world trying to mend fences and stop nuclear proliferation in this the eleventh hour. They want to continue with the last eight years, it seems, even after the results are in.

I do not expect anyone on this board to sober up. However, I may set off a few light bulbs or plant seeds in the back of some closed minds. In the future, conservatives I have touched might not be so quick to sign on to economic policies that don’t add up. Maybe they will prefer a GOP primary candidate that can work with our neighbors on this little blue dot. I seek progress from my co-bloggers, not perfection.

Your posts should continue in the same warm spirit. You have your own seeds to sow. I sincerely hope you stick around. Take a breather if you must – you have in the past. I have always been glad to read your posts when you returned.

Rich Baxter
as for sara, i don't think we'll have to worry about xmas spending or buying 'nation' subscriptions when the REALITY of joblessness finally overwhelms the rhetoric.jm111309image001_5F00_5A754D6F.jpg

This says it all about the wacky left, and they are running the country.

For balance I receive lefty stuff. Here we see their glowing stupidity. Instead of promoting economic activity, they describe it as evil.  Yet...and this is the great part, they are going out of business and really want contributions.


Sigh...they are running the country :(
 
Dear Nation Friend:

"Go shopping."
That was the Bush era's misguided solution to a recession, and this holiday season we're being bombarded with that crass commercialism once again.
But you don't have to boycott the holidays.
Instead of buying your loved ones holiday gifts that enrich the corporate establishment, why not share your passion for progressive journalism by bidding on a one-of-a-kind gift from "The Nation"?

Sunday, November 15, 2009

New Blood


We added a few to the list today.  Let's see if they can opine worth  a darn.
first time here for little ol' sara p.

happy many of the gitmo residents are relocating. seems the relocate strategy will be based on who voted for dr obama. nyc is getting some and NOW looks like good ol' ill. is in line. surprised they had room with six former gov's incarcerated and one in line. but, could be good for tourism: each federal detainee is allowed 10 visitors a month; so, that's about 2000 muslims/ month sizing up targets in the windy city and so forth. a real recon windfall!

praying for dr obama on this (psam 109:8). YOU look it up.

sara p.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

He just needs a hug.


Today’s announcement marks a significant step forward in our efforts to close Guantánamo and to bring to justice those individuals who have conspired to attack our nation and our interests abroad,” Mr. Holder said.


No decision has yet been made about where to hold the military trials, Mr. Holder said. But the administration’s decision to bring five Sept. 11 detainees onto United States soil for prosecution in the civilian legal system drew immediate fire from members of Congress as well as relatives of victims and neighbors of the federal courthouse.

They argued that Qaeda suspects did not deserve the protections afforded by the American criminal justice system, that bringing them into the United States would heighten the risk of another terrorist attack, that civilian trials increase the risk of disclosing classified information, and that if the detainees were acquitted they could be released into the population.

Friday, November 13, 2009

The triumph of a crazed ideology over common sense. "Rudy Giuliani"

Before Mark departs :,) (it will take some time).


To bring these Combatants to our country for trial and expose our citizens and our Judiciary system to the danger associated with their presence is idiotic.

This confirms what many have long said,  these fools do not believe that we are at war.

We have an existing courthouse and system (Military) in place in Gitmo to adjudicate these evil men.

But now they are going to have the same rights that we all enjoy AND the possibility of acquittal.

How the left can encourage, let alone tolerate this considering the attack was carried out on their "Mecca" is beyond me.

From Jane Fonda hugging the cannon to worrying about enemy combatants rights more that our citizens, the left never matures, always faults America and can never be trusted.

Which Rich? :).

In the news: the "O" plans to spend much of his SOTU address, addressing spending reform.
OK, if....and that is a big if...he really addresses and does something about this important issue then...mea culpa.
But...I strongly doubt Mr. "tax the rich" will meaningfully address spending. Why should he address spending when you can just add another 5% on top of the last 5%. (Health care just the latest example)

Rich is more deranged than ever

I have decided to stop contributing to this blog. I read Rich's responses and they have become so unhinged and deranged that I now have doubts if he has any rational thought processes. He has to be spending extra time reading the Daily Kos, Huffington Post and MoveOn.org where irrational thought rules the day. When he stated that he loved Nancy Pelosi that went over the top. Poor thing is that he and Terry have still not figured out that they are in bed with a bunch of thieves who could give a rats behind about the future of the country. You can't keep blaming others for your mistakes and since it is beyond Rich's ability to have any rational thoughts and debate even half way honestly I cannot go on contributing my valuable time to this endeavor because it is not making a difference.

What I have observed through this is that Conservatives do not blindly support a candidate and do not make excuses for errors that those they support make. Liberals blindly march in lock step to whatever tune there candidate sings and then will make excuses or blame others for any shortcomings in there candidate. If this doesn't work than instead of honestly debating they just go on the attack against the messenger. Since no amount of blogging short of full frontal lobotomies will cure Rich and Terry of their mental disorder known as liberalism I respectfully resign from posting to this blog. I will be joining Lou Dobbs at this time.

Jim please take me off the list of those who receive e-mails everytime there is a new post.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Budget deficit rose to $176 billion in October, worse than predicted

In a disappointing start to the federal government's new fiscal year, the nation posted a higher-than-expected $176.4 billion budget deficit for October, the Treasury Department announced Thursday, as bank bailout and stimulus spending kept outlays at a high level, while the recession decreased receipts.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected the federal government to post a $150.0 billion deficit for October. The U.S. government posted a $46.6 billion deficit in September to close out FY2009 with a $1.42 trillion deficit - a fiscal year record. The nation's deficit in FY2008 was $454.8 billion. The near-tripling of the deficit compared to FY200

I Went Against My Free-Market Instincts”

That’s what former President Bush said today in explaining why he signed off on the bailout for Wall Street…calling the decision “one of the most difficult of his presidency.”
“I went against my free-market instincts and approved a temporary government intervention to unfreeze the credit markets so that we could avoid a major global depression,” Bush said.
And without mentioning President Obama by name the former President did have some rather pointed comments for the current Administration claiming that generally “history shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much.”
Bush, who as President also signed off on massive aid to the auto industry, warned against a government takeover of the economy fearing it would eliminate free-market enterprise. “As the world recovers, we are going to face the temptation to replace the risk and reward model of the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control.”

Bush also signaled that he has been reflecting on his time in office and on some of the “toughest decisions” he had to make as president.
“There were some good days and there were some tough days, but every day I was honored to represent the nation I have loved,” he said. “I gave the job my all, I always did what I believed was in the best interest of our country and I came home to Texas with my values intact.”
Those values – which Bush called “timeless” and ones that defined his presidency – are the basis for the institute’s work at SMU. Bush said it will research and advance public policy proposals to strengthen freedom, opportunity, responsibility and compassion.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Oh....Mark(y)

Mark my brother, my soul mate. 

We have forgotten to discuss via post, this important topic that Rich and I strongly agree on.

The Cardinals ate some serioulsy good Bear dinner last Sunday!

Wow, we have a good team, who would have thunk it?

And you don't even want to start on the Suns (wagers available).

Why is it a good thing if we are liked?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Wow, again

The Double Standard About Journalists' Bias


By John Stossel
I made The New York Times last week. It even ran my picture. My mother would be proud.
Unfortunately, the story was critical. It said, "Critics have leaped on Mr. Stossel's speaking engagements as the latest evidence of conservative bias on the part of Fox."

Which "critics" had "leaped"? The reporter mentioned Rachel Maddow. I wouldn't think her criticism newsworthy, but Times reporters may use MSNBC as their guide to life. He also quoted an "associate professor of journalism" who said my speeches were "'pretty shameful' by traditional journalistic standards." All this because I spoke at an event for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a "conservative advocacy group."
It is odd that this is a news story. In August, AFP hired me to do the very same thing. I give the money to charity. The Times didn't call that "shameful."
But in August, I worked for ABC News. Now, I work for Fox. Hmmm.
It reminds me of something that happened earlier in my career.
I was one of America's first TV consumer reporters. I approached the job with an attitude. If companies ripped people off, I would embarrass them on TV -- and demand that government do something. (I now regret the latter -- the former was a good thing.)
I clearly had a point of view: I was a crusader out to punish corporate bullies. My colleagues liked it. I got job offers. I won 19 Emmys. I was invited to speak at journalism conferences.
Then, gradually, I figured out that business, for the most part, treats consumers pretty well. The way to get rich in business is to create something good, sell it for a reasonable price, acquire a reputation for honesty and keep pleasing customers so they come back for more.
As a local TV reporter, I could find plenty of crooks. But once I got to the national stage -- "20/20" and "Good Morning America" -- it was hard to find comparable national scams. There were some: Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc. But they are rare. In a $14 trillion economy, you'd think there'd be more. But there aren't.
I figured out why: Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check. Reputation matters. Word gets out. Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy. Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.
It made me want to learn more about free markets. I subscribed to Reason magazine and read Cato Institute research papers. Then Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Aaron Wildavsky.
My reporting changed. I started taking skeptical looks at government -- especially regulation. I did an ABC TV special, "Are We Scaring You to Death?" that said we TV reporters often make hysterical claims about chemicals, pollution and other relatively minor risks. Its good ratings -- 16 million viewers -- surprised my colleagues.
Suddenly, I wasn't so popular with them.
I stopped winning Emmys.
I was invited on CNN's media program, "Reliable Sources," to be interviewed by The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz and an indignant Bernard Kalb. They titled the segment, "Objectivity and Journalism: Does John Stossel Practice Either?" It was in big letters over my head.
Apparently, I had broken the rules.
On the air they told me that I was no longer objective. I was too stunned to defend myself effectively. I said something like: "I've always had a point of view. How come you had no trouble with that when I criticized business?"
In hindsight, I wish I'd said: "Look at the title on the wall, you hypocrites! It shows you have a point of view, too. Many reporters do. You just don't like my arguments now that I no longer hew to your statist line. So you want to shut me up."
But I didn't.
So I'll say it now: Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view.
So why am I the one called biased?
I like what "Americans for Prosperity" defends. I'm an American, and I'm for prosperity. What creates prosperity is free and competitive markets. That means limited government.
And I will speak about that every chance I get.

Wow, the truth

\John Stossel RealClearPolitics

Health care
It's a triumph of mindless wishful thinking over logic and experience.
The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by "experts" means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.
Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to "homeowners" who turn out to be 4-year-olds. Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance.
Competition is a "discovery procedure," Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek taught. Through the competitive market process, we producers and consumers constantly learn things that force us to adjust our behavior if we are to succeed. Central planners fail for two reasons:
First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered -- much of it never articulated -- throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.
Second, this "data" is dynamic: It changes without notice.

Do we need another example of the narcistic arrogance of Barry?

Ww were all mistaken about Barry not going to Berlin. He did appear in Berlin -- metaphysically, if not physically. He did not honor our allies with his presence. He kept his distance and descended briefly, like a god, from the ether. Introduced by Shrillary herself the annointed one appeared via technology to make a speech.
In his speech he made no mention of Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev, or the Soviet Union, and he was tellingly silent about Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. The only American he quoted was John Kennedy, the President who acquiesced in and privately favored the building of the wall.
Even more to the point, Barry proved unable to refrain from injecting his own autobiography into the event. You see, walls fell down when he was elected President.
It was perfectly appropriate that someone sound this theme at the time of his inauguration. It was, indeed, an important event when the first American of African decent was elected to the presidency.
But Barry seems to think his presidency as important a milestone as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the world of the narcissist, everything that happens is always about him.

Is Rich the biggest hypocrite you have ever encountered?

All of us on the conservative side of this blog have admitted to the many mistakes that our last President made. Have admitted to the fact that it was wrong to pull the Marines out of Lebanon after the bombing during Reagan's Presidency. Have admitted that the Republican Congress of during Bush the youngers first term spent way too much money. Have admitted that Scooter Libby lied to the Grand Jury which is a crime.

On the other hand Rich has yet to criticize the unprecedented gargantuan deficits that the Democratic party is running up. Yet he still can criticize the comparatively paultry deficits that Reagan ran up.

Rich has yet to criticize Barry for his inability to make a decision regarding troop deployment to Afghanistan one way or the other or for the deterioration of the War in Afganistan since Barry became the President but quickly jumps all over any mistakes that Bush made during these Wars he was the Commander In Chief over or can criticize Reagan for pulling the Marines out of Lebanon after the bombing. Rich how about your views on your hero Clinton's conduct of the support of our military in Somalia? Have you watched the movie Black Hawk Down?

Rich can criticize people on the right trying to keep Scooter Libby from going to jail for lying to a Grand Jury but cannot bring himself to recognize that President Clinton committed the exact same crime of lying to a Grand Jury.

He also can criticize Charles Krauthammer and make statement about what he would or would not acknowledge without any support for this statement yet he once used a Charles Krauthammer column in this blog to make his point. That in of itself is proof that Krauthammer is more pragmatic than Rich.

What do the rest of you think?

Where Does Responsibility Fall?

I'll be interested to see how the media assesses blame for the Ft. Hood tradgedy. I wouldn't need to ask if it were a couple of years ago-- clearly the blame would go to Bush and Cheney, or Cheney and Bush more likely, since we all know Cheney was really in charge.

I've already read one article in which a Washington Post writer said there wasn't anything Obama couldn't have done, which, I guess, means that someone else is Commander in Chief. I wonder who it is in this adminsitration? Biden? Surely not. Pelosi? Yikes! Michelle? Maybe?

How about nobody? Mr. Obama can't even decide to decide on a strategy he proclaimed earlier this year for his "war of necessity." Turns out theory is fun and reality is scary. If you make a real decision that can get real people killed and make it Your War and Your Legacy, well, what fun is that? So you dither.

Will our real Commander in Chief please stand up so we know who to talk to?

Hags

From a leftie at the New Yorker via the WSJ

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."
Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.
This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, "Putting on my amateur historian's cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted."

Exactly