Showing posts from February, 2009

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Obama's Economic Armageddon

In a little over a month, Barack Hussein Obama has accomplished more than any American President has in four years. That accomplishment was to run up a bigger deficit in a month, than any American President has in four years. Now arrogantly rolling out a 10 year spending plan, 2 years more than his legal term, Obama proposes saddling Americans with over 20 Trillion dollars in debt. No depression or recession could be nearly as damaging or last as long as the damage Obama plans to do to the economy. Having already run up a deficit of 1.75 Trillion dollars in a little over a month, the Prince of Chicago is obviously only getting started. Despite the Orwellian media coverage busy repackaging Obama's plans to triple the deficit, as a plan to "cut the deficit" based purely on White House talking points, what we're really looking at is the "Selling of America" to pay for massive spending favoring the Democratic power base. With tax hikes targeting industry in gene

Friday Afternoon Roundup - an Orwellian Deficit, the Racist Ball and the Border That Isn't There

White Houses Announces Plan to Cut Deficit, by using Deficit Spending to Triple the National Debt. Does that make any sense to you? Because it sure doesn't make any sense to me. In George Orwell's Animal Farm, the 7 rules that the animals lived by continued to change by Napoleon's fiat, even as none of the other animals could remember what they used to be. So "Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good" became "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better." The press under Obama has switched to enthusiastically braying, "Deficit Reduction Good, Deficit Spending Better." For anyone who wondered how to tell when the Orwellian age was here, it would be when the press describes a politician's plan to triple the national debt using deficit spending, as a plan to cut the deficit. All the better because the politician's first wave of campaigning involved a commercial secretly done by one of his own employees and planted as a "viral video" that explo

Obama's 900 Million Dollar Payout to Hamas

The United States plans to offer more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel's invasion and to strengthen the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, U.S. officials said on Monday. The money, which needs U.S. congressional approval, will be distributed through U.N. and other bodies and not via the militant group Hamas , which rules Gaza, said one official. There are two obvious problems with this scenario . The Palestinian Authority does not rule Gaza. Any rebuilding of Gaza will only strengthen Hamas. Secondly, any foreign organizations operating in Gaza either answer to Hamas or are Hamas run outright. Take the UNRWA, the refugee arm of the UN which despite multiple refugee crises worldwide, focuses on working for the Palestinian Arabs. While there is a great deal of focus on foreign aid to Israel, the taxpayer money that goes to the UNRWA goes unnoticed. In 2006 alone the US contributed 135 million dollars to the UNRWA, out of an over half a billion dollar budget. Th

Chas Freeman: "Help the Shiites win fast, consolidate their damn dictatorship and get the hell out"

Chas Freeman 's proposed appointment to head the National Intelligence Council  is already getting lots of scrutiny. A former Saudi lobbyist who did business with the Bin Laden group, Chas Freeman has naturally spewed more than his share of bile toward Israel , and toadying toward the Saudi kingdom. After 9/11, Chas Freeman sought to do business with the Bin Laden group and responded to critics by saying that Bin Laden was still “a very honored name in the kingdom [of Saudi Arabia]". He's called Hezbollah a legitimate outgrowth of Lebanese nationalism and denied that it was an Iranian puppet. He bragged about his million dollar donation from the Saudi King to fund his organization, which he used to publish Walt and Mearsheimer's article attacking the "Jewish lobby". These days he's pushing for a "One State Solution" in Israel, code for the destruction of Israel. Much of this has already been effectively laid out by s uch as Melanie Philips

Fear of Power vs Fear of Powerlessness

For most of human history people have been afraid of being powerless, rather than of having power. Being powerless meant having no rights and no defense. It meant being a slave in name, or all but in name. Today however millions of people in First World countries worry intensely over having too much power. This mindset causes them to abandon the traditional defensive and offensive mechanisms, and instead argue that the solution lies in giving up power, rather than in increasing power. Where traditionally people were afraid being powerless, today the citizens of the civilized world are taught to be afraid of having power. The havoc this has wreaked on the ability of civilized countries to defend themselves can be seen everywhere. Traditionally a country defends itself against internal or external attack. Today however a civilized country is the first to be blamed for an attack, and then blamed for defending itself excessively, and finally is blamed for provoking the attack. The on

Land of Opportunity or Land of Entitlement?

For centuries America has attracted immigrants as "The Land of Opportunity", not because we had a giant government bureaucracy overseeing every aspect of daily life, but because good jobs and social mobility were available. These two factors combined together represented the American ideal of a place without limitations where anyone could become anything they wanted to be. Unfortunately America has been slowly changing from a Land of Opportunity to a Land of Entitlement, overseen by a monolithic bureaucracy and subsidized by workers. That is why the constant cry of "Soak the Rich" that we've been hearing lately is so obnoxious. It isn't Robin Hood and the Merry Men raiding the Sheriff of Nottingham loot in Washington D.C. on behalf of the oppressed and the downtrodden. It's the Sheriff of Nottingham, a massive government bureaucracy looking for new sources of revenue to gorge itself on. The free market has its flaws, and plenty of them. On the othe

Cry Islamophobia and Let Loose the Dogs of War

The Muslim oversensitivity to any perceived insult is in directly inverse proportion to how much hate Muslims themselves are willing to display for others. If you go by Muslim standards, removing a man wearing a t-shirt with Arabic words off a plane is an unacceptable display of Islamophobia, but banning an Israeli tennis player from Dubai is completely legitimate. Drawing cartoons of Mohammed as a terrorist is not acceptable, but calling for the deaths of the cartoonists is. Writing a book parodying Islam is unacceptable, but murdering the book's translators around the world is reasonable. Israeli checkpoints on the Gaza border are unacceptable examples of apartheid, but Saudi Arabia barring all non-Muslims from entering the city of Mecca or from holding Saudi citizenship-- is their right. A protest against Hamas and Al Queda that desecrates their flags, which have verses from the Koran on them, is unacceptable offensive to Muslims-- but Muslim student associations waving

Republicans and Democrats and the Economic Survival of America

As usual we see Democrats and Republicans both casting themselves as defenders of the ordinary man. Debates will be conducted over health care, minimum wage increases and tax breaks. And the hypocrisy will flow like wine. The simple reality is that both sides like to cast themselves as working to make life better for the average American, some may even believe it. In practice what occurs is a tug of war between two extremes. Democrats propose to address the inequities of a capitalist system by replacing it with a totalitarian one, Big Brother with a bureaucratic face by using government programs to fill those gaps. Government programs can certainly help people but government agencies and bureaucracies represent their own motive force. Programs that sound good in theory quickly create a massive spiraling bureaucracy full of fraud and abuse. The people they are meant to help quickly become divided into beneficiaries of the aid who wind up perpetually on the dole and those who increasingl

Obama's Trickle Down Economics, and why Bernie Madoff has nothing on Barack Obama

Trickle Down Economics isn't simply a conservative theory, it's also a liberal one. The difference is that the liberal version of Trickle Down Economics involves taxing the public to death, and having Congress trickle down some of the money back to the public, in between massive doses of pork and waste. Obama's Stimulus Plan is a perfect example of Liberal Trickle Down Economics. And what is Obama's deficit spending spree motivated by? By the liberal theory of Trickle Down Economics which claims that rolling out hundreds of billions for every congressman's pork project, including protecting endangered mice, encouraging energy efficiency and giving millions in NEA grants will somehow trickle down to the average American and stimulate the economy. If conservative Trickle Down Economics was challenged as delusional and an excuse to stuff the pockets of fatcats, liberal Trickle Down Economics is even worse. If giving business a break improves the odds that the economy w

Israel's Political Malaise Reaches the Terminal Stage

It's been a week since Israel went to the polls, and there still is no government. Instead there are a motley collection of parties, alliances and leaders-- all jockeying for their place in line in a hypothetical government that may be formed. First in line we have Livni, clueless and inexperienced, whose only asset was that she was and wasn't actually the Prime Minister, allowing her to maintain plausible deniability for the corruption and incompetence of her government. Kadima, her party, had been formed by Sharon as a way to destroy Israel's two governing parties, Labor and Likud, replacing them with a one man state. When Sharon's aging body finally gave out, his closest sidekick Ehud Olmert, replaced him and kept the kleptocracy going. When Olmert seemed set to finally begin paying for his crimes, his own sidekick, Livni took his place for the electorate's sake. And somehow in the process dragged Kadima to a legislative victory. Considering that Kadima was

The Headchopping Moderate Muslim

When Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV, he had the perfect story to offer. An employee of major American brand name companies such as Clorox and Proctor and Gamble, with an MBA from Georgetown, founding a Cable network whose mission statement contained lots of liberal buzzwords about fostering diversity, building a dialogue and breaking down cultural barriers. Bridges TV made every effort to put forward a public multiracial and multicultural face. As did Muzzammil Hassan. Just a good All-American Muslim looking to bridge some gaps and teach the world to sing. Out front Bridges TV put out press releases crediting Hassan's wife with generating the idea of the cable network, and touting programs that would bring Muslims, Christians and Jews together. The reality however was radically different, both in the Hassan marriage and on Bridges TV. Bridges TV may have issued its press releases and tacked up its mission statements promising to teach everyone to love each other. But the