Thursday, July 29, 2010

2017: 'The Year America Dissolved'...

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.
The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.
With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.
The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.
Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.
Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

From August 31, 2009: [Obama] Another Failed Presidency



Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. 

In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School.  Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big.  Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal  put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us.  He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course.  It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

[editor's note: The author is not the not the same person as Geoffrey P Hunt, who works at the Institute for Scientific Analysis as a senior research scientist.]

Read more:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/another_failed_presidency.html

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Eric Holder Puts The Lie to the “Post-Racial” President


Ever since Obama won election, the NAACP has been trying to prove that they are still relevant and should still exist. It seems that they have chosen to gin-up charges of racism against whomever is prominent on the right, to wit Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Why is it that people on the left seem hell-bent to destroy Martin Luther King’s dream of people being judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin? Why is it that people on the left are so quick to ignore or overlook things done by blacks which, if done by whites, would be immediately chastised? Why are blacks getting a free pass when they engage in racism by liberals and the press? These, my friends, is the $64,000.00 questions.

THE END OF THE POST RACIAL PRESIDENCY

Whenever race is mentioned, it hurts Barack Obama’s presidency. The very basis of his presidency is that he is the post racial president. Now he finds himself knee-deep into racial politics.
Some is of his own doing. In suing Arizona over immigration reform, he takes a step that alienates the three-quarters of Anglo voters who back the law. In refusing to prosecute the Black Panthers for their blatant intimidation of white voters in 2008, he alienates fair thinking people of both races. But in firing Shirley Sherrod, he showed African-Americans that he was caving in to pressure from FOX News and the conservatives. Then, by reversing field and reinstating her, the president and his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack show whites and Republicans-Independent voters that he is caving in to pressure from the African-American community.

There are two common denominators to this equation: race and weakness. Any involvement in racial politics has to hurt Obama at his core. It goes to his fundamental selling point: That he is post racial. By dealing with race repeatedly, he is vulnerable just as Bill Clinton was when he had always to deal with sexual scandal. It is not his strength but can ultimately destroy his credibility.
And then there is weakness. By caving in first to the right and then to the left, Obama acts and looks indecisive and weak. He comes across as out of control and projects the same image of incapacity and chaos that he so amply demonstrated when the oil was gushing in the Gulf. He reminds one of the opening days of the Clinton Administration when it tied itself in knots over the issue of gays in the military. It looks like amateur hour at the White House.
Obama has two conflicting goals: He wants to expand his base among whites and heighten enthusiasm of blacks. Good goals, both. But if he uses racial issues to accomplish either objective — as he appears to do in the Sherrod controversy — he alienates one group in order to win the other. Not a good strategy.

RACIAL POLITICS BLOWS UP IN OBAMA’S FACE

Whenever race is mentioned, it hurts Barack Obama’s presidency. The very basis of his presidency is that he is the post racial president. Now he finds himself knee-deep into racial politics.
Some is of his own doing. In suing Arizona over immigration reform, he takes a step that alienates the three-quarters of Anglo voters who back the law. In refusing to prosecute the Black Panthers for their blatant intimidation of white voters in 2008, he alienates fair thinking people of both races. But in firing Shirley Sherrod, he showed African-Americans that he was caving in to pressure from FOX News and the conservatives. Then, by reversing field and reinstating her, the president and his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack show whites and Republicans-Independent voters that he is caving in to pressure from the African-American community.

There are two common denominators to this equation: race and weakness. Any involvement in racial politics has to hurt Obama at his core. It goes to his fundamental selling point: That he is post racial. By dealing with race repeatedly, he is vulnerable just as Bill Clinton was when he had always to deal with sexual scandal. It is not his strength but can ultimately destroy his credibility.
And then there is weakness. By caving in first to the right and then to the left, Obama acts and looks indecisive and weak. He comes across as out of control and projects the same image of incapacity and chaos that he so amply demonstrated when the oil was gushing in the Gulf. He reminds one of the opening days of the Clinton Administration when it tied itself in knots over the issue of gays in the military. It looks like amateur hour at the White House.
Obama has two conflicting goals: He wants to expand his base among whites and heighten enthusiasm of blacks. Good goals, both. But if he uses racial issues to accomplish either objective — as he appears to do in the Sherrod controversy — he alienates one group in order to win the other. Not a good strategy.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities. 

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

Federal Government Helped Pay Home Air-Conditioning Bills for Federal Employees, Prisoners and More Than 11,000 Dead People

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government helped pay the home air conditioning bills for more than 11,000 dead people, 1,100 federal employees, and 725 convicts in fiscal year 2009.

Read more at:  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/69005

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Obama Administration Approves First Direct Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Through New High-Risk Insurance Pools

The Health and Human Services Department is giving Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new high-risk insurance pool that will cover any abortion that is legal in the state.

$20 MILLION SPENT ON STIMULUS SIGNS? #obamafail

Obama OKs offshore drilling for Atlantic, Gulf...despite the "gutting" of MMS

The latest liberal ploy is to claim Cheney 'gutting' the Minerals Management Service.

If that is the case then why did Obama OK more offshore drilling before the BP oil spill?

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Libertarian View of Gay Rights, Marriage, and Government Intervention

Most importantly, and I think this is the key point, all of this is only an issue not because of our lack of “separation of church and state” (though I certainly want the government out of the church, it’s far too corrupt) but because we have a state in the first place that constantly infringes upon our civil liberties. Power to regulate personal relationships in any way, including marriage, should never be given to the state. The beauty of the free society is that we can still live at peace with each other even if we do not agree with certain lifestyle choices that others make. What I am proposing in the above paragraphs is simply that restoring civil liberties involves getting the government out entirely.
Thus, there are differing levels to how Christian libertarians must handle this “rights” issue with the state we encounter today:
  1. As it pertains to the United States, we should never condone the Federal government handling any kind of marriage issue. Such legislation would not be Constitutional. Instead, we should promote the elevation of individual rights always superseding the government.
  2. At the state level, Christian libertarians should not support further government intrusion into marriage in general. This is unacceptable power given to the government. For example, I do not think it right for state governments to pass marriage amendments that either legalize ormake illegal the practice of “gay marriage.”
  3. Christian libertarians should, in general, support the recognition of all consensual contracts, including those of the “civil union” type. This is especially reasonable considering that any money the government does not steal is a good thing.
 Read more at:   http://libertarianchristians.com/2010/07/05/gay-rights-marriage-and-government-intervention/

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