Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Monday, March 30, 2009

Top Conservatives on Twitter

Doubling Down on the Deficit Disaster

Republicans irresponsibly ran up enormous deficits during the Bush administration. Democrats are now doubling down on the disaster. Republicans and Democrats have played a game of chicken with tax cuts and spending in recent decades. That's been a major strategic mistake. Democrats have the advantage, because the majority of long term spending is structural. When the bill comes due, taxes or inflation will rise dramatically. For everybody. At all income levels. There's simply no way around it.

The Obama We Knew But Denied

What if an American President campaigned as a pragmatic centrist, promised tax cuts to 95% of the American people and pledged himself to a new era of government honesty, openness and bipartisanship, but never had any of those intentions? The result might be a cabinet full of tax cheats, political cronies and lobbyists, and a president peddling an overstuffed budget of liberal dream-schemes at a time when the American economy can least afford an extra nickel for folderol or fiddling.

Meanwhile Rome is burning.

President Obama rolls the dice and grabs a can of kerosene.

This president's budget, plus the Faux Stimulus monstrosity, plus the TARP bailouts all add up to the biggest, most irresponsible spending spree in American history. Yet, according to some of the best and brightest economists on the planet, these schemes are built upon overly rosy expectations, will do little to stimulate any economic growth and promise to punitively tax the very people and industries we need to provide investment capital and jobs to actually create the pie from which all these liberal cherries are to be plucked.

Yet President Obama and his double host of Ivy League staffers are billed to be the smartest folks in the Country.

If I didn't know better, I might suspect these people aren't really interested in returning America to prosperity.

Obama's budget drives national debt to 80 percent of GDP

Secret Ballots Exposed

Fantasy Obama Vs. Reality Obama

So where are we in the Age of Obama? Here is where we are: Cap-and trade is on hold, the middle-class tax cut has an expiration date, a government healthcare insurance option is 50-50, and trillions are being spent on Wall Street. Where would liberals like to be? Probably somewhere in the vicinity of this agenda by Robert Kuttner: 1) Have government directly refinance mortgages; 2) nationalize troubled banks; 3) nationalize the Fed; 4) put a tax on all financial transactions;5) end international tax and regulatory havens; 6) enact a carbon tax; 7) comprehensive pre-K; 8) union card check; 9) health insurance for all; 10) a huge public works program.

The Obama Budget: Spending, Taxes, and Doubling the National Debt

During his presidential campaign, President Barack Obama promised the American people a "net spending cut."1 Instead, he signed a "stimulus" bill that spends $800 billion, and he has proposed a budget that would:

Increase spending by $1 trillion over the next decade;
Include an additional $250 billion placeholder for another financial bailout;
Likely lead to a 12 percent increase in discretion ary spending;
Permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over pre-recession levels;
Raise taxes on all Americans by $1.4 trillion over the next decade;
Raise taxes for 3.2 million taxpayers by an average of $300,000 over the next decade;
Call for a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) law despite offering a budget that would violate it by $3.4 trillion;
Assume a rosy economic scenario that few econo mists anticipate;
Leave permanent deficits averaging $600 billion even after the economy recovers; and
Double the publicly held national debt to over $15 trillion ($12.5 trillion after inflation).

THE $1.4 TRILLION TAX INCREASE

In his recent address to Congress, President Obama promised that "if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime." Yet even before the budget was released, he signed into law a 62-cent tobacco tax increase that does not exempt lower-income smokers. His budget proposes a $646 billion cap-and-trade tax that energy companies would immediately pass on to all consumers, including those earning less than $250,000. Consequently, President Obama's budget would raise everyone's taxes, says Brian M. Riedl, a researcher with the Heritage Foundation.

The budget would offset some of these tax increases by making permanent the Make Work Pay and the American Opportunity Tax Credits, which were originally part of the "temporary" economic stimulus bill. Because tax credits do not reduce marginal tax rates for most taxpayers, they do not encourage the working, saving, and investing that are vital for productivity and growth, says Riedl.

A nearly $1 trillion tax increase is reserved for couples earning over $250,000 and individuals earning over $200,000. Beginning in 2011, the President's budget will increase their taxes by:

* Raising the top two income tax brackets to 36 percent and 39.6 percent ($339 billion).
* Raising capital gains and divi­dends tax rates to 20 percent ($118 billion).
* Phasing out personal exemptions and limiting itemized deductions ($180 billion.
* Reducing the value of their tax deductions by approximately one-fourth ($318 billion).

This $1 trillion tax hike on "the rich" would fall on the backs of only 3.2 million tax filers -- an average tax hike of more than $300,000 per filer over 10 years on a group that is already shouldering an increasing portion of the income tax burden, says Riedl.

Such tax increases would significantly reduce economic growth rates by reducing incentives to work, save and invest. Specifically, higher investment taxes may prevent the economy from receiving the investment capital that it needs to recover. Because most small businesses pay the individual income tax, they would face new barriers to expanding, investing, hiring and even staying in business. Wealthier individuals would be more likely to allocate their wealth wherever it avoids these new taxes, rather than where it would be most productive for the economy, explains Riedl.

Source: Brian M. Riedl, "The Obama Budget: Spending, Taxes, and Doubling the National Debt," Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder No. 2249, March 16, 2009.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Dead-End Politics of Envy

Consider the following from Plato's Republic, Book 8, as Socrates describes the transition from democracy to tyranny:

"And it is clear that when a tyrant arises, the position of popular leader is the sole root from which he springs....Once he takes over a docile mob, he does not restrain himself...he banishes and kills and drops hints about the cancellation of debts and the redistribution of land.... He is the one, then, who stirs up faction against the rich."

We The People Stimulus Package

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

US REPRESENTATIVES & SENATORS SHOULD RETURN THEIR AIG BONUSES: AIG Gives $644,000 in 'Campaign Bonuses' to U.S. Senators and Representatives

WASHINGTON, March 25, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ ----As President Barack Obama and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) continue to point fingers over which one of them is to blame for the stimulus bill's "Dodd Amendment," which specifically excludes bonuses from caps on executive pay, one thing is clear: both Obama and Dodd profited from AIG campaign "bonuses" and an overwhelming majority of Americans want them to give this money back.

According to a breaking poll conducted by The O'Leary Report and Zogby International, 73 percent of Americans think any members of Congress who received campaign contributions from AIG over the last two years should return the money.

This might go double for President Obama and Senator Dodd, who were by far the largest recipients of AIG campaign cash in the last election cycle. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama received $104,332 from AIG and Dodd raked in $103,900. Obama and Dodd far outpaced the rest of Congress, as the next largest beneficiary received about $45,000 less than each of them. All told, AIG gave a total of $644,218 to federal candidates over the last election cycle.

The Enemy's Agenda

Nancy Pelosi's Muckety

MucketyMap

Obama's Wall Street bailout failure




Barack "Urkel" Obama

Congressional Liberals: Committed to Spend $1 Billion Every Hour

Friday, March 20, 2009

AIG retention bonuses going to employees it plans to terminate

Often lost in the raging debate over $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG employees — amid a $170 billion taxpayer-funded bailout — is the fact that these were not performance bonuses, they were "retention awards." Essentially, they were payments made to employees to keep them from leaving the crumbling company.

Did Mark-to-Market Create a Phony Banking Crisis?

Last spring, the banks and the Feds had a clear choice:

A) leave M2M as-is, and allow all these securities to be valued at "???" (which essentially means ZERO) then act as if the sky was falling, scream bloody murder, "too big to fail", etc, and get a huge chunk of free taxpayer money AND have the government take the worst assets off your books. Gratis.

-or-

B) let M2M be amended to something more sane, allow the assets to be properly valued, but lose anywhere from 20-50% because you made bad business decisions.

Hmmm... I know which one I'd choose.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

What Hamilton Has Wrought



Obama’s Remarks About AIG’s Bonuses

Q Mr. President, you received —

THE PRESIDENT: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.

Q — you received $100,000 from AIG during the campaign. How do you feel about those contributions today? Do you plan to do anything about it? And at least one member of Congress has now called for your Secretary of the Treasury to resign. Your thoughts.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have complete confidence in Tim Geithner and my entire economic team. Understand, as I said before, Tim Geithner didn’t draft these contracts with AIG. There has never been a Secretary of the Treasury, except maybe Alexander Hamilton, right after the Revolutionary War, who’s had to deal with the multiplicity of issues that Secretary Geithner is having to deal with — all at the same time.

And he is doing so with intelligence and diligence. Nobody is working harder than this guy. He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand. And what we need to be doing is making sure that we are providing him the support that he needs in order to work through all these problems so that we’re able to deal with them more effectively in the future.

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!"
-- Alexander Hamilton






Bailing out banks merely prolongs pain and problems

Taxpayers Gather To Protest Spending, Taxes, Growing Debt

Obama May Find Anger Over Bonuses Backfires on Agenda (Update1)

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Ten Myths in America

1) School Teachers are Underpaid in America
2) Women Earn Less than Men in America
3) Whites Prevent 'Minorities' from Achieving Economic Parity
4) Healthy Foods are Expensive, and Unhealthy Foods are Cheap
5) America's Foreign Policy is the Reason for the 9/11 Attacks
6) Leftists are 'Liberal' and 'Progressive'
7) Republicans are Less Intelligent than Democrats
8) Democrats Have a Better Record on Racism than Republicans
9) Houses Always Rise in Value
10) High Oil Prices Will Create Permanent Long-Term Poverty

Flashback: Carville Wanted Bush to Fail

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: "I certainly hope he doesn't succeed."

Carville was joined by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who seemed encouraged by a survey he had just completed that revealed public misgivings about the newly minted president.

"We rush into these focus groups with these doubts that people have about him, and I'm wanting them to turn against him," Greenberg admitted.

The pollster added with a chuckle of disbelief: "They don't want him to fail. I mean, they think it matters if the president of the United States fails."

Minutes later, as news of the terrorist attacks reached the hotel conference room where the Democrats were having breakfast with the reporters, Carville announced: "Disregard everything we just said! This changes everything!"

The press followed Carville's orders, never reporting his or Greenberg's desire for Bush to fail. The omission was understandable at first, as reporters were consumed with chronicling the new war on terror. But months and even years later, the mainstream media chose to never resurrect those controversial sentiments, voiced by the Democratic Party's top strategists, that Bush should fail.

Rush Limbaugh and the Two Minute Hate

I am ashamed that Republicans are so simple. Like Lucy in Peanuts, Obama has once again offered the Republican Party a football to kick, and, like gullible old Charlie Brown, Republicans tried to kick it and ended up flat on their faces.

Obama's purpose should have been obvious. For the past eight years, the Democrats have made intense and persistent use of the Two Minute Hate technique that George Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

The Hate had started. As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen...The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there were none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure...Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party--an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling... Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room ...In its second minute, the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen ...The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep...

The Entrepreneur's Moment

The question facing America is: who will lead us out of this economic crisis?

George Washington answered this question for us in a letter to Benjamin Harrison in 1784. He wrote: “A people... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything.”

The Glaring Hypocrisy of the Rush Critics, Cont'd

Monday, March 9, 2009

Anybody against Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter needs to be booted from the Republican Party

MCCAIN'S DAUGHTER COMPARES GOP TO DONNY OSMOND

IN THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM-Rahm Emmanuel: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

The Little Mr. Conservative

Bucking the media trend on global warming 'crisis'

One of the headlining speakers to open the event Sunday evening was European Union and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who was welcomed with a standing ovation. Klaus, one of the most outspoken critics of manmade global warming in Europe, says those who propagate global-warming hysteria are like the communists of old Europe. Like global-warming alarmists, he stated, the communists did not listen to opposing views.

Vaclav Klaus (Pres. of Czech Republic)"They didn't even try to argue back," said Klaus. "They considered you a naïve, uninformed and confused person, an eccentric complainer....It is very similar now."

Klaus believes that politicians who propagate global warming hysteria only have one goal in mind: control of the public. "It is evident that the environmentalists don't want to change the climate," he said. "They want to change our behavior...to control and manipulate us."

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Obama appoints Rush Limbaugh leader of the opposition

In Case You Missed It: Senate Rejects Fairness Doctrine, But Dems ‘Open Back Door to Censorship’

Obama: The Great Divider?

Why I Voted Democrat

I voted Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want.  I've decided to marry my horse.

I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

I voted Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

I voted Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.

I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as THEY see fit.

I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass that it is unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

Definition:
 "A Liberal is a person who will give away
everything they don't own."  

War On Rush and Conservatism Update 3/4/09


Rush to Obama: Debate Me...

Rush Job: Inside Dems' Limbaugh plan


Liberals defense against attacks:  "We have problems to solve...that we have created."

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Countering Liberal Class Envy Arguments

Where Has All the Income Gone?

Your Average Joe

Bingo! Call It Communism

I once wrote that we could play "Communist Manifesto Bingo": once President Obama enacts or strengthens five planks from the Communist Manifesto, yell "bingo" and you win. One month into President Obama's first term, BINGO!

Transcript of Rush Limbaugh's Address at CPAC

Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion. All politicians, including President Obama, are temporary stewards of this nation. It is not their task to remake the founding of this country. It is not their task to tear it apart and rebuild it in their image. (Crowd chanting "USA")

It is not their task, it is not their right to remake this nation to accommodate their psychology. I sometimes wonder if liberalism is not just a psychosis or a psychology, not an ideology. It's so much about feelings, and the predominant feeling that liberalism is about is about feeling good about themselves and they do that by telling themselves they have all this compassion. You know, if you really want to unhinge a liberal it's hard to do because they're so unhinged now anyway, even after -- but all you have to do is say you know that the things you people do, the things you people believe in are cruel. That's the last way they look at themselves. They are the best people on the -- they're the good people. You tell them that their ideas and that their policies are cruel and the eggs start scrambling. I have learned how to tweak liberals everywhere. I do it instinctively now. Tweak them in the media. And no reason to be afraid of these people. Why in the world would you be afraid of the deranged?

The Obama Economy

As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.

Monday, March 2, 2009

The Law Liberals Always Break

Look back at 9-11. Some thirty years of liberal policies regarding intelligence gathering, intelligence sharing and prosecuting terrorists led to an attack that killed three thousand Americans in, well, two of the nations' most liberal cities. You cannot say this in polite company, but statistically some 90% of the victims likely voted for the policies that led to the dreadful day. Shhhhh

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ECONOMICS: Agora Financial's The 5 Min. Forecast

ECONOMICS: Capital Commerce

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ECONOMICS: CARPE DIEM

ECONOMICS: NCPA | Daily Policy Digest

ECONOMICS: RealClearMarkets

ECONOMICS: WSJ.com: Real Time Economics

NEWS: NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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NEWS (SATIRE): ONN Front Page Stories

TRACKING: The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises