Wake Up and Smell the Roses

Having been caught snoozing on camera during a number of Mr. Obama's cabinet meetings, top economic adviser Larry Summers was finally prodded into comment about the apparently failing stimulus, and the increasing public sentiment that it isn't helping.
In defense of his administrations spending and its results, Summers had some reassuring news: "The number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels. Searches for the term were up four-fold when the recession deepened in the earlier part of the year, and the recent shift goes to show consumer confidence is higher".
As unemployment now tops 10% in 16 states, and 15% in Michigan, we can only conclude that people in those states have no access to Google or no concept of 'economic depression'. There is also the possibility that people in those states simply prefer an alternative Search Engine, like Ask Jeeves. Since these unemployment rates are the highest they've been since the early 1980s, one wonders, how would Larry Summers have qualified a successful stimulus back then? Less people buying Encyclopedias letters E and D?
When pressed for a more enumerated defense, Summers continued in a more professional fashion: “More than $43 billion in immediate tax relief has reached households and businesses. Another $64 billion has been channeled into the economy through aid to state and local governments, expansions in social programs, and spending on education, housing, and transportation projects. In addition to the amount that has already been paid out, another $120 billion in spending has been obligated by the federal government and is on track to begin working its way into the economy.” Now coupling this statement with plucky Joe Biden's recent assurances yields a whole big pile of contradiction. The top economic adviser and top Vice President really need to coordinate better.
According to Summers, people weren't worried about relief for their households or businesses, but rather about the philosophical underpinnings of 'economic depression'. The primarily contentious issue, unemployment, designates that $64 billion channeled to education and housing irrelevant, and Joe Biden told us all to avoid public transportation anyway lest we contract H1N1 and become swine. The pending, or rather, "obligated" $120 billion (what else would it be obligated for I wonder??) will apparently become autonomous and work itself into the economy as it best sees fit, which granted may be better than the Left trying to direct it. Well, at least that $120 billion is working, because Michigan sure isn't.

Brilliant Biden Strikes Again

Well, he served his time-out, and Mr. Biden has been taken off the leash and out of the dog house to bark once more. After urging Americans to avoid using airplanes, subways, or any other crowded transportation, lest they all contract H1N1 and die, Biden attempted to make amends by encouraging Americans at the prospect of their continued health.
While addressing perhaps the only major group that isn’t rightly skeptical of Obama’s Health Care scheme, VP Joe Biden had some illuminating thoughts. At the AARP Town Hall meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, Biden had encouraging words and fanciful outlooks to share. “And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable”. He’s right of course, the status quo still lets too many hard-working Americans keep their money in their pockets. It ios curious he mentioned that to a crowd of retirement community and nursing home residents who very much like the status quo, because anything else gives them indigestion. As legislation moves through to increase the upper income tax bracket rate in New York to 57%, Biden shared his reassuring philosophy with his elderly audience: ““It’s totally unacceptable (not the tax, the current healthcare system). And it’s completely unsustainable, even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.” So, will Mr. Biden cut some of the gangrene, dead-end government expenses that will have the system at a deficit by 2016? No, because Obama really likes deficits, and because while Biden admits, ““We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation”, he has the most brilliant of solutions.
After thinking hard for three days and nights and studying all of Keynses’ most celebrated (if unsuccessful) theories, Biden made up his mind: “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”
Ah ha! I didn’t know our public schools were this bad. I did not know that when you have one number and then you take away from it, it’s actually much bigger than it was before. Of course, Biden and his audience don’t have to worry about such trivial arithmetic. By 2016 his regime will long have been ousted, and then they can blame the conservatives for not spending enough money. In the mean time, all of his and Mr. Obama’s supporters in the AARP will had gotten their full doses and died off, leaving the tax burden –err I mean surplus of money to be enjoyed by posterity.

One Small Step for a Man, one Giant Step for Mankind?

A Major in the U.S. Army reserves, currently residing in Florida, received his orders for deployment to Afghanistan. He had since sued against his deployment, saying that because there was not, in his mind, substantial proof of Obama being born in the U.S., which would therefore render him Constitutionally unable to occupy the position of Commander in Chief, he does not have to obey his marching orders.

When I had first read about this, I figured the guy probably just didn't want to go to Afghanistan (and I don't blame him) where more soldiers have died in the first half of the month than the first month of U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Secondly, I wondered what the military does with such cases, when it is obvious the person doesn't want to contribute, but does continue to receive military benefits. Instead of next receiving a notification for a dishonorable discharge, or ten lashes, his orders were revoked, no questions asked! This has a number of potential ramifications.

Can any soldier now use this excuse, albeit an apparently good one, to refuse service in Afghanistan or anywhere else Mr. Obama decides to spread peace? More importantly, it means that, as Dr. Orly Taitz, Maj. Cook's lawyer said, "the military has nothing to show for Obama. It means that the military has directly responded by saying Obama is illegitimate – and they cannot fight it." This further acknowledges that, if the current Commander in Chief is illegitimate, all troops present in Afghanistan, as Maj. Cook intrepidly pointed out, are by default war criminals. NOt that this in itself is a good thing, or that it will really affect the way U.S. prisoners are treated, but at least there's less of a worry now about Mr. Obama sending the troops to Honduras to save Democracy.

Mr. Obama finally has brought some change! Not to the economy or environmental protection, but rather by opening the doors to the possibility that the U.S., for the first time, is run by a war criminal.

Remembering Richard...

So fondly now do I look back to the days when our confident nation was headed by that scheming, paranoid jowler from California. Throughout the 20th century, liberalism hit the U.S. in 3 waves, each dramatically increasing the interference by the government with its citizens. Each of the waves, which carried with them the detritus and debris of the shoddy policy and empty ideology of the progressives, came in the form of some crisis or another. For Mr. Wilson, it was WWI and the initial Red Scare. FDR of course furthered the communists via the Depression and WWII, while LBJ surfed high on the Civil Rights debacle. Now Mr. Obama, the fourth wave, perhaps the 4th rider of the Apocalypse (though I think God awards Americans more dignity than to end our proud legacy in his hands), rode in on the economic crisis. Of course, his beneficent government involvement speaks for itself.
The federal deficit has surpassed $1 trillion for the first time ever, and could grow to nearly $2 trillion by this fall. The Treasury Department announced Monday (7/13/09) that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to $1.09 trillion, and the likely forecast of the deficit for the entire year is $1.84 trillion in October. Clearly Obama is going for the record. (Incidentally the deficit was 32 billion to the positive for the month of June in 2008).
Anyway this has all been said and is hardly a new threat. What is a threat however, and what makes me wish Nixon had a powerful heir, is the WHO. The World Health Organization, by linking the H1N1 virus to the 1918 epidemic (which of course, Wilson benefited from), has conjured up enough fear to go on record calling the virus, "unstoppable", declaring that every nation must acquire/develop vaccines.
Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, addressed the findings of the WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, or SAGE, saying, "The committee recognized that the H1N1 pandemic ... is unstoppable and therefore that all countries need access to vaccine." Unstoppable? It's the first global crisis I'm aware of that can be cured by a few days' bed rest and plenty of fluids. Keeping in mind that the WHO went on record to proclaim the virus as intimately linked to swine upkeep, causing a nation-wide, government-sponsered slaughter of the pigs in Cairo and an increased rift between Muslim and Christian populations there, one wonders, who will strike at the bait this time? In Egypt, as it turned out, over 98% of the pigs were raised and consumed by Chrisitan farmers, and best of all, the WHO later admitted there's no link between the virus, pigs, and its transmission into the human populace.
Now, as Obama & Co. loom their tremendously expensive, all encompassing, tax the privately insured health care package above Congress, the WHO delivers just enough of a catalyst to dump their medical fantasies upon us. If only Nixon were President, he'd have some serious people keeping an eye on those WHOs, because they certainly seem to be in bit of a league here, and where were they to cure Nixon of his phlebitis?

The First of Many

Bad news Nobody!

If anyone actually believed the ambiguous statement that people making under 250,000 dollars a year will be unaffected, at least tax-wise, by the cap and trade legislation, the energy company SRP has something else in mind. In a preemptive company statement they've announced that, in the event of the cap and trade going through the Senate and into practice, they'll increase standard rates by about 9%, an average increase of about 150 dollars per home, to accommodate the increased costs that come with the bill.

Additionally, there's talk now in Congress of banning any and all forms of tobacco consumption in the U.S. military by any person in uniform. The rationale is that, because military healthcare is paid for out of public funds/taxes (an issue to be reexamined in itself) they now have an obligation to stay healthy.

Four soldiers recently died in Mr. Obama's Afghanistan war, I wonder if it was smoking which killed them? No no, it was a bomb. I'm just curious how they think this will at all go over well. This is more brilliant than Wilson and Co.'s idea to directly take America's money (via the income tax) and then simultaneously prohibit them from drinking their sorrows away (prohibition). Maybe 50 years down the road people will appreciate the thought, but that is unlikely because 50 years down the road, people will be crushed trying to pay off the debt and potential medicare expenses being accrued now, while simultaneously waiting in lin to have their crushed backs examined.

Save This!

According to Florida State annual Manatee census, conducted every November, Manatee populations are down again. As one may recall, the species, which has never engendered a large population, was endangered as of the late 1970s. Since the imposition of rigorous protection and restrictions on boating throughout their designated habitat, their population has tripled. While the Eco-Friends work to eradicate land cows at the Hall of Justice and save the Ozone from their harmful methane exhaust, they've successfully saved the beloved sea cows, or have they? According to the 2008 census, a record number of deaths was recorded off the Florida coast.

Has the protection slackened? Are cruel boating enthusiasts chopping them to bits (which again, is only acceptable to do to land cows, then called 'steaks')? No. The reason for their sudden decline is that the manatees have run out of food. Their population has grown too large to sustain itself and they've eaten themselves out of house and home. There were no autopsies required for the emaciated bodies which washed ashore. Either Mother Nature really wants these gentle giants to stay rare, or maybe, just maybe, disrupting the course of nature and prohibiting the natural selection they're fighting so hard to teach in schools (though prohibiting from applying in schools) is not the answer. As the manatees now starve to death in record number one wonders, will there be a movement to save the sea grass that now is apparently in short supply?

Global Governance: The Emperor Strikes Back

I'd found it hard to believe that Congress had dared vote on, and then pass the Caps and Gains Bill before it had been technically enumerated. While I have yet to hear of anyone fully reading the 1,200 page behemoth legislation all the way through, some of its key benefactors are nonetheless jumping to some rather absurd conclusions.
As the next process of voting is pending in the Senate, Democrat Barbara Boxer had some curious forewarnings. According to Boxer, should the Senate not pass the Bill as well, there will be dire results including droughts, floods, and fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening air pollution, and more. Now, before anyone could stop and wonder how droughts, floods, and fire could happen simultaneously, apparently in agricultural areas, Boxer reassured those inconvenient doubters with the huge upside.
If the Senate does act, millions of clean-energy jobs, reduced reliance on foreign oil and less pollution for the nation's children will all result. Now maybe we should give Baxter the benefit of the doubt and leave aside the whole issue with the massive reserves of oil which are being taken painstakingly slowly thanks to overly done and unnecessary regulation. Maybe we shouldn't keep in mind that there has been one Oil rig spill since they started drilling, far less than the number of tanker spills bringing “foreign oil”. Also, even though it’s inconvenient, let’s leave aside the probability that, if there are fires, floods, droughts, and no agriculture all going on at once, our nation’s children probably won’t really have the time or convenience to notice the superfluously damaging pollution--they might just be amazed to experience a fire and flood at once, all in the middle of a drought. Instead, I’m still trying figure out how increased taxes on American domiciles and the deliberate reduction and reverse of industry will lead to millions of clean energy jobs. Even Obama hasn’t yet laid claim to having “created or saved” that many jobs. Addressing the threat of a Republican filibuster Boxer responded, “This is consistent with a pattern of 'No. No, we can't. No, we won't,” she continued, "I believe that this committee, when the votes are eventually taken on our bill, will reflect our president's attitude, which is 'Yes, we can, and yes, we will.” Now while Boxer finds these slogans ever appropriate here, how would they respectively address such questions as, “Will you disregard the Constitution?” “Will you tax and spend until the American people really are the helpless victims you claim us to be?”
Speaking of which, former vice president Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.” To better describe this ambiguous scheme, Gore reference the proposed 2007 UN carbon tax. In December 2007, the UN climate conference in Bali, urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”
“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, said at the conference. Schwank insisted that wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” according to Schwank, who then added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”
Despite the vast majority of coal burning being done in Africa, the U.S. tax payers would foot the bill, apparently disregarding the “polluters pay rule” because the U.S. hasn’t contributed enough to said fund enough. Is getting involved in such a farcical “governance” really so dangerous though? I mean small amounts of trees and coal may be left in the ground, and that’s kind of nice, but then take into account also that at the same conference the self-titled group “Friends of the Earth” advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations. "A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources," according to spokeswoman Emma Brindel. If we just redistribute the resources, how will any less be burned? They insist the problem is the necessary use of harsh fuels such as coal by 3rd world countries, so I guess the rationale is that if Everyone becomes a 2nd world country, the nice compromise between 1st and 3rd, everyone will be happy (the happiness of course being forcibly distributed).