Iraq Civilain Death Toll Survey Is Ridiculous

There are some staggering numbers out there, proposed and perpetuated by academia, suggesting the United States military has murdered more than a million civilians in Iraq since 2002, or roughly 1 out of every 30 people in that country. The "studies" suggest even this claim to be "conservative", as in, this number is a conservative estimate.

Remember, you can never trust any number given by a liberal! (see previous posts)

The numbers come primarily from two studies by the same group of people, conducted in 2004 and again in 2006. The first study surveyed 988 "households" in 33 "clusters" and found 73 total "violent deaths". The report includes a statistical anomaly, stating that the Fallujah cluster alone accounted for 52 deaths. This aberration was left in the final analysis based on the rationalization that it was "not sufficiently abnormal to warrant total exclusion from the study." So 3 percent of the data accounts for 66% of the results and they don't think that's "sufficiently abnormal"?

This is the sad state of science today.

Oh, but they go on to state that in the Fallujah cluster they visited 52 households and 23 were abandoned. They don't state why they surveyed buildings with no people inside and included that in their results, but do make the absurd speculation that the reason no people lived in those houses was because they were killed by U.S. actions.

Any rational-thinking person would now be completely comfortable dismissing the body counts from these surveys as the worthless speculative work of imbeciles. But wait, there's more.

The same group went back in 2006 and this time expanded their survey to 1849 households in 47 clusters. Again Fallujah data was included, and the results of this study state, "With 95% certainty, that between 426,000 and 794,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths as a consequence of the war." With 95% certainty? Seriously? If anything these results are even more dubious because of the attack on Fallujah carried out by U.S. Forces during that time. Remember that Fallujah was Saddam Hussein's hometown - that's where all the loyalists were concentrated (or scared shitless to rise up against their dictator), so the concentration of resistance was significantly higher there than any place else. I would venture that to use the survey numbers in a different light, 66% of the remaining Saddam regime was in Fallujah. Also remember that the U.S. military went to extraordinary lengths to protect civilians there, taking the unprecedented step of delaying the invasion for several days to allow civilians to leave the city! One could easily suggest, and I do, that ALL deaths in Fallujah should be considered enemy combatants.

That invalidates more than two-thirds of the survey results.

Now ask yourself this: Is 1849 households a sufficient sample? To suggest that the sample is a fair representation of the total population is a grave misstep, and one taken with obvious malice against the United States. Also, the 1849 households comprised 12,801 individuals, which is inconsistent with the birthrate of Iraqi women. The individuals number is inflated by 20%. There are 5.4 million households in Iraq, with 22% rural population underrepresented by the survey.

Finally, the survey inquired how many "violent deaths" were experienced by the household. The decision was made not to use actual hospital statistics because, "Only the innocent go to the hospital." Huh? Ignoring that justification as completely contradictory, the survey team instead simply knocked on "random" doors and asked how many people in the household have died in the last 40 months. Whoever answered the door would tell them a number and they would write it down. So actual data was disregarded in favor of the word of a distressed sliver of a largely un-canvassed population. The final conclusion, extrapolated linearly through 2010, is that, "about 20% of households surveyed had lost at least one member, and estimated that 1.03 million people had died in the war. Without compensating for the conservative biases mentioned above, their data and sample size gave them 95% certainty for a number of deaths between 946,000 and 1.12 million."

And the methodology is beyond question because it is the same methodology used in previous war zones, and it is at least somewhat unlikely that all of the previous studies could also have been flawed. Unless of course the same methodology were used... Round and round we go.

Science!!! (*sarcasm*)

Conservative biases? Right, because what they really want to say is that using their original data and including the Fallujah sample, 285,000 people died in the first 18 months of the war, and a linear extrapolation through the total 117 months of operations would yield a result of 1,852,500 civilian deaths and three times as many wounded, for a staggering and unbelievable total of roughly 7.5 million casualties! Viola - George Bush is worse than Hitler! (That was surprisingly easy.)

But they realize only vegetables or people who read Democrat Underground would believe such an obvious falsehood, so they are forced to stick with their "conservative" estimate of about a million deaths. Meanwhile, other outlets suggest anywhere from 15,000 to 748,000 deaths, a spread so large as to be useless.

Look, I am not suggesting Iraqi civilians have not died during the conflict. Clearly thousands have. But even this survey indicates almost as many civilians were killed by insurgents as by coalition forces, and I suggest that is the only conservative number in the piece. U.S. soldiers are bound by rules of engagement that the enemy is not. How many of our boys have died protecting civilians while the insurgents use them as shields? The people who did the survey cannot risk the truth, so they chose to ignore it and instead report lies to be used in anti-American propaganda. How many more will die because of their actions? Could this survey be considered an act of treason?

The truth is we do not know how many people have died and in most incidents we do not know who is responsible. That is the nature of war. The question is simply at what point do we say we can shed no more American blood? That is the only thing we can control. But believe me, when the United States withdraws its last man, violence in Iraq will continue, and it will be on the hands of the fundamentalists on either side of Islam who will perpetuate it. A functioning government with a respected rule of law and police entity is essential, or whatever the number of unintentional casualties at the hands of the coalition will pale compared to what Islam can do to itself.

The Odd Couple

I'm sure I'm not the only one who found the President Clinton event at the White House extremely odd. There was Bill, in all his old-man glory, and I got the strong impression that Obama was just relieved to finally have someone who knew what he was doing running things. Meanwhile, Obama slinked away to a party. Big shocker there. Nobody knows less about governing but more about expensive galas than Bama.

The thing is, I felt relief too. Bill at least understands the art of the deal. Bama is just a complete failure. The office is way too big for him. He's a bad fit.

Did we just watch Barack Obama throw in the towel on his presidency? Is he mailing it in? I wonder.

Vote Running

The “Dream” Act. Only a liberal could think of amnesty for illegals as a “dream.” But did you know Orrin Hatch was an original sponsor of this bill? He’s opposing it now because his own political future is cloudy as he faces the scrutiny of the Tea Party. He’s come around – that’s the important thing.

It’s a dream for Democrats because Latinos vote for them at a greater rate than even women. The only group more reliably in the bag for Dems is Blacks. Naturally the prospect of creating millions of new votes has the lib leadership all moist. They are especially excited about Texas, where enough illegals reside that could turn that Republican mainstay blue. I mentioned before that Texas already grants in-state status for student illegals, so a large population of Dems’ ideal demographic – young students – is already established there.

I was thinking about what this situation is like in relevant terms. Imagine you are a Mexican. You cross the Rio Grande at El Paso – its ankle deep there – and are met by a border agent. He offers you two choices:

Choice A, you can apply for a student visa, dedicate yourself to succeeding at school for 4 years and when you get your diploma you can apply for a work visa and eventually citizenship. After 6-10 years of keeping your nose clean, working hard and paying taxes you will be granted the trust of the American people and the rights of citizenship that goes with that trust.

Choice B, you can accept this $100, (the face on the bill means nothing to the Mexican) courtesy of the Democrat political party. Every month you remain in the country the Democrat party will give you another $100. For every family member you bring into the country with you the Democrat party will give you an additional $100. In fact, who ever comes with you, as long as you say they are family, will qualify you for another $100. Nobody will check. We would rather you got a job and paid some taxes and stayed out of trouble, but if you don’t we won’t hold it against you. All we want in return is your vote for a Democrat at every opportunity. Do you think you can manage that?

Sound familiar? Seems a lot like drug running to me; cold hard cash for the simple trafficking of drugs, or in this case, votes for Democrats. The more votes you can move the more cash is in it for you, and it’s the easiest thing in the world because the American system of wealth redistribution puts you at the lowest tier by default, so you have the most to gain, and there are no strings. All you need to do is vote Democrat! Just don't question how well that has worked out for Blacks.

Having unveiled the Dream Act for what it really is, I believe Latinos are a double-edged sword for Democrats. On the one hand they want amnesty, so they will vote for Democrats because of that. On the other hand they tend to be Catholic, pro-life, and anti-gay, as evidenced in California last year when their gay marriage ban passed, helped largely by the Latino vote.

What is a liberal to do!

Democrats figure that progressivism will ultimately win out. They will tirelessly wear down resistance with the retread emotional arguments from the dusty playbook. That’s what they think, anyway. I think it is possible the opposite will happen. Once Mexican illegals are citizens, their nature as hard workers and devotion to Christianity may swing them away from the Democrat party. My guess is that will take about 80 years, or roughly the time it takes for the generation that owes their freedom to Democrats today to die off. If you want an argument supporting that thought just think of your grandparents. Mine are still in the bag for Democrats because of FDR.

It’s going to happen. We will soon have an amnesty act. Might as well get it over with and start the clock.

The Great Society

There's no need for me to get into this. The epic failure of LBJ's centerpiece has been detailed a hundred times by people far more knowledgeable and intelligent than I. You can find dozens of books online with a simple search on Google or Amazon.

The important point is to tie the indefinite extension of unemployment benefits to what Johnson claimed to want to accomplish. People will not find work as long as government pays them a subsistence wage to remain unemployed.

Ending poverty? Ending unemployment? Government is clearly not the answer, and history has proven it.

Let's Make A Deal!

After all that posturing during the election season. After all the nonsense about “D is for Democrat and R is for Reverse” or whatever, and then the ridiculous arbitrary statement that “Tax cuts for the rich are paid for by the middle class,” and, “Tax cuts for the rich will cost $700 Billion.” Well, I guess the democrats don’t really believe that nonsense either, because they signed off on extending President Bush’ tax cuts for all Americans. And good for them – good for us!. Now if only Democrats were “compromising” for the right reason, that being to not further stifle economic growth and try to grow the market for jobs in this country. Unfortunately they intend to make good on their threats. They show no indication of reducing spending to offset the decrease in tax dollars, so the net result will be more debt and more uncertainty, so the economy will remain stagnant.

This is all part of the plan, as demonstrated by two things that happened in conjunction with the extension of the Bush tax cuts. First, Democrats are also going to cut the Social Security tax for one year – not because they intend to reduce benefits, which would actually be a good thing, but because they want to further compound the debt crisis. That’s right, they want that. Second, Democrats have scrapped the previous plan to extend unemployment benefits by 12 weeks and instead extend them an additional 13 months! Naturally this will cost hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the government is already taking in less than it did before, but it also aligns the next unemployment fight with a very important event:

The Iowa Caucus.

That’s right, in case you forgot, election season started the first Wednesday after the first Monday of last month, and although Bama will probably run through the primaries unopposed this gives Democrats something to grill conservatives on (unopposed in the major media) at the beginning of Primaries season, saturating the airwaves with sappy emotional stories of people who are chronically unemployed. Blah. Blah, blah. So get ready for that nonsense. Meanwhile, don’t expect the President to “compromise” on anything for the rest of his presidency. It is critical to the Democrat strategy to keep the economy stagnant by continuing to spend this country into oblivion. That allows Bama to get in front of the camera and read a message on his teleprompter that goes something like, “We tried it their way, but now we know for sure that tax cuts don’t work…” When in reality the tax cuts do work but our completely inept government has no idea how to implement meaningful reforms that incentivize work instead of joblessness.

Which leads me to my next post: What do we have to show for three generations of incentivizing poverty, i.e. The Great Society!

Down Goes Hillary

Hillary has effectively announced she will not run for President. I wish I could take the credit - my well-timed Bradley Manning post spelled out the nature of her plight better than any other source I've seen - but I'm pretty sure no one reads this blog. My guess is we will continue to see more damaging revelations about Hillary and her complete and total ineffectiveness as a diplomat and bureaucrat come from the Wikileaks site. She's trying to head off some of the embarrassment by letting everyone know now that she has no interest in future public office when in truth she will have so damaged herself that all prospects for future runs for office are dead, dead, dead.

So Wikileaks was good for something.

Government's New Jeggings

It is truly a sad day. My bleeding heart, um, bleeds. (I’ve been meaning to get that checked out). Our President has chosen to deprive government of hundreds of billions of dollars by allowing the filthy rich two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-aires keep more of their own money. For shame! How will the poor government make do with less? And right before the holidays! Has this man no compassion for the plight of the government? Did not his prior experience as a community organizer – his only pseudo-real world life experience, upon which he was elected to the lofty office he now occasionally passes through – teach him what it means to be in need, with no means to support oneself except by the mandatory contributions under penalty of law from others more fortunate? I gnash my teeth at him!

We must act now to band together to help the government, which cannot do without these hundreds of billions of dollars, not because it needs the money to feed the hungry, but because it cannot bear to part with expanded digital cable and 100 Mbps DSL. Not because it cannot afford to pay rent but because it must have that new 4G iPhone with the maximum voice and data plan. Not because it cannot afford to clothe its 300 million children but because that fat bitch down the street just got the newest Kim Kardashian jeggings and the government’s ass isn’t that fat so shouldn’t the government have a pair of Kim Kardashian jeggings too? Not because… well you get the idea.

Oh, the humanity!

Why is the Media protecting Bradley Manning?

* I know the answer, but I’ll get to that. *

Bradley Manning is the little prick that stole all the secret documents distributed by WikiLeaks. If you didn’t know that, or only heard it in passing, but know exactly who Julian Assange is, it’s because the US Media is overtly repressing that information.

I am not saying Assange isn’t at least partially responsible, but consider this. Let’s say I give you one million dollars. Then I tell you it’s stolen. Do you try to spend it? You might not, but Assange is the kind of character that would. You don’t need much to figure his type. Just look at the guy – doesn’t he seem like the kind of nerd that was picked on in school, and who later developed into an egomaniac as a defense mechanism against attacks on his fragile self-esteem? As he gained some small notoriety in the hacker community he became a defensive narcissist, but because he wasn’t as smart as he liked to think he failed to make any kind of impact there, too. A latent Napoleon or Hitler complex set in, and he is now consumed with being notoriously famous, and perhaps enjoys the idea of becoming a martyr, at which point he will finally realize acceptance in his life. If only his father had loved him as a child…

Anyway, who cares? Assange is just the distribution vehicle. Any idiot with a credit card could have done the same thing. And for that matter, I can’t find much fault with the New York Times or the other international media outlets that chose to publish many of the docs. Again, those are the dubious characters that were incapable of resisting such an offer. More to the point, none of them wanted to be scooped, especially the NYT.

Bradley Manning has the most to answer for. Even if Assange convinced him to do it, Manning was still the one actually stealing from his country. And he did it with enthusiasm! Even now he has no regret about his actions. Most of the content is frankly laughable – there are few actual secrets, it just makes Hillary look bad – but if the situation in Yemen, specifically, is influenced by this in such a way where American lives are ultimately put at risk, then what Manning did will have directly caused that.

I see no reason why Manning should not be court-martialed and sentenced to execution. That is the only appropriate outcome.

But it won’t happen for one reason: Bradley Manning is gay. The media and liberals are desperate to keep the focus off Manning because at this very moment they are trying to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and even though Manning’s homosexuality probably has nothing to do with his crime, the perception could be that a gay soldier’s actions cost American lives. So because we’ve been so bludgeoned by political correctness and we are paradoxically now all so conditioned to overreact to homosexuality, we cannot be honest with ourselves as a society enough to punish the actual criminal for his actions, or at the very least we’re not allowed to talk about it. The media is so desperate to protect him that they have once again turned the villain into the victim, labeling him a “funny little guy.” There is nothing funny about exposing your fellow soldiers to unnecessary risk and life-threatening situations.

Screw it. Hang the guy, admit Hillary’s future political prospects are f*cked, and then move on. We have an economy to un-wreck.

111 Weeks

How do you want to spend the next two years of your life?

Being unemployed sounds like a pretty good option these days. Lame-ass-duck Democrats are going to pass another 12 week extension of unemployment benefits this month, adding to the current 99 weeks that are available. I predicted this would happen when they passed the last extension over the summer. Perpetual unemployment is another method of wealth redistribution, i.e. government dependency, and is therefore a useful tool for liberals in their unrelenting push to destroy prosperity, capitalism, and the American Dream – three major obstacles in the path toward socialism and then communism.

My question is, why 12 weeks? Why not 50 weeks, or 100 weeks, or just make it limitless? The answer is obviously politics. Over the summer Dems accused Republicans of not caring for the unemployed. Conservatives held their ground but lacked the votes to stop the insanity. Dems tried to get the last extension through so it would run out right before the election, but they were delayed by the Oil Spill, but now they see another opportunity. 12 weeks puts the extension to the end of March, which should align nicely with the first legislative push from the new class of conservative legislators looking to cut spending. Democrats can then make their counterproductive emotional arguments and try to score political points in the larger effort to disrupt the momentum conservatives have gained in the last 2 years.

The tactic won’t work – too many people see that perpetually extending unemployment is a scam, and it should serve to underscore the failure of the Democrat economic policy under Bama, Pelosi, and Reid.

Also, I’ve seen and heard of more than one study lately that shows that long-term unemployment is psychologically more damaging than a death in the family. It would seem then that incentivizing unemployment would actually diminish happiness. I’ve said it before, liberals love to share misery.

The TSA Security Myth

I’m pretty sick of the TSA controversy already. It’s funny to watch the same libs who cried out in anger about the wiretapping program under George W Bush now saying they don’t mind being physically violated because they know it’s making them more safe. That’s the talking point, almost word for word from Juan Williams and the ladies on the View on Wednesday. (Liz had it on)

So whatever, libs just react the way they are told, what’s new?

It occurred to me that the TSA does not keep us anymore safe than if we were allowed to walk right to the gate like we could 10 years ago. The TSA exists for one purpose: the perception of fairness. If as a country we were serious about security, we would have no qualms about racial profiling. Hello, terrorists look like, well, terrorists! Just like illegals from Mexico look like Mexicans. But America is not mature enough to be honest with itself, so we have to inconvenience everyone else for the sake of equality.

Of course this all stems from a culture of legal retribution. Trial lawyers love civil rights cases because Americans have acquired a great deal of guilt we are not permitted to ignore. If the oppressor happens to be the U.S. Federal government, you can bet your house there will be a line of attorneys salivating at the prospect of a huge payday. So a hundred billion dollars and millions of hours wasted in lines later we all suffer just so one small group or other can’t sue.

But it’s all BS, because behind the scenes the government is profiling, with secret lists of likely suspects who share common skin tones or surnames. That’s where security actually happens, not at the front door of an airport terminal. The TSA is a huge scam, a cover up for the real operation. Unfortunately we just have to deal with it, but what they are doing now with these scanners is too flagrant. People are already starting to talk. It’s too expensive, and it goes too far. The thin curtain of fairness is in serious danger of being torn down. So much the better.

You want to know how safe the TSA makes us? Try this thought experiment. What happens when a suicide bomber walks into an airport and waits patiently until he gets to the middle of one of those long lines queuing up at the TSA checkpoint, and then sets himself off? He can kill just as many people as he would on an airplane if not more, and at the same time totally destroy the myth of TSA “security” forever. What’s the government response then? Put TSA outside the Airport? Just blow up that line, then. You see, wherever you perform fairness is where you expose people to greatest risk!

The TSA is a colossal waste of time and resources, but until the country accepts that terrorists actually do fit a profile all the rest of us can do is complain.

High Speed Rail: Pros & Cons

I was listening to WPR yesterday morning while running errands, driving around town wherever I pleased by whatever route appealed to me, on nobody’s schedule but my own, and the topic of the hour was the High Speed Rail initiative. Joy Cardin had two guests, both of them very much in favor of commuter rail. They recited all the Obama talking points for why it is good for Americans generally, and Wisconsinites specifically, and then fielded questions from mostly pro-rail callers.

One of the callers asked why if Europe has been using rail successfully for decades America can’t seem to get it going. This question was asked while I pulled into the massive free parking lot in front of the local Ace Hardware store. Nobody on the radio acknowledged the subtle irony.

I finally decided to run through the pros and cons of railroad travel in my head instead of just listening to people regurgitate talking points. Here goes.

Pros:
- It’s nice to have someone else do the driving once in a while, especially when the distance is long. Anything over 2 hours can be tedious.
- Today’s Amtrak Passenger cars are relatively comfortable, if you can find a newer reclining seat.
- It is often nice to have restrooms and a food car available at all times without having to stop.
- Railways carve through some beautiful country you otherwise do not have a chance to see from a car or plane.
- Once a certain passenger threshold is met, trains are more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation.
- Trains have the potential to get you from place to place very quickly. Some French trains can go 300 mph!

These are the fanciful arguments you hear from people who want it, appealing to the emotional but impractical ideals of those who don’t think long enough to get to the actual implications of the proposal or the real-world cultural roadblocks that will quickly doom this venture to Amtrak-style failure times a thousand. In the spirit of common sense, here’s my list of cons.

Cons:
- Train travel can be prohibitively expensive. A one-way ticket from La Crosse to Milwaukee costs, on average, $51 per person. An entire family can make the trip in a single vehicle for half that.
- Trains operate on schedules. Americans are conditioned by three generations of travel by car. We leave and arrive whenever we please.
- Trains are political animals, and succumb to the failings of jurisdiction. If a municipality wants a stop, and they are willing to pay for it, they will probably get one. That means one more 20 minute delay for anyone trying get from one side of the state to the other. Ideally a high-speed train would not have this problem, but get serious already.
- Once you get to the end of the tracks you still need to get to your destination. One of the major differences between Europeans and Americans is that Euros walk. Think Americans will be willing to walk a mile or two after getting off the train? Good luck. Oh, but we could take the bus…
- Europe has been resigned to train travel because its cities were not planned around roads or parking lots. Ours were. Americans are not forced to take the train, and the only way to change that is to make car travel much more expensive. This will be accomplished by a gas tax. On a cultural note, Americans are rarely won over by negative reinforcement. That’s the kind of thing that causes landslide elections.
- Trains are incredibly annoying. You cannot control who you share a car with, and you’re just likely than not to be in a car that smells bad or has out of control children and screaming babies, or people taking up more than one seat or coughing or talking too loud and generally being inconsiderate, or the bathrooms being disgusting and the food car being out of just about everything.
- Security is impossible. First of all, nobody has brought up the ominous prospect of installing and operating TSA-like security at every train depot. Imagine airport TSA issues times a hundred in terms of cost and manpower and logistics and delays. And don’t forget unions!
- It will be a simple matter for terrorists to walk up to any length of track in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin and put a bomb on the track and detonate it from the comfort of a sunny hillside and watch the speeding train pile into the surrounding fields and kill hundreds or more. If I have thought of this, trust me, terrorists already have stretches of track in mind. They’re just waiting for Obama to supply them with human targets.
- Our current infrastructure of freight track cannot handle so-called bullet trains. Trains that move at 300 mph need tremendous lengths of straight, flat track. The cost to get the United States up to French standards could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
- We do not have enough track to simultaneously accommodate current freight traffic with desired passenger traffic. The cost of the current plan includes a proposal for new track, but expect freight lobbies to want in on the new track or use it as leverage for massive public expenditures to upgrade existing track. The cycle never ends.
- Finally, the current proposal creates a supply for which there is insufficient demand. If there were, Amtrak would be profitable, or at least break even. Americans enjoy the freedom of travel by car, and until that fundamental right is legislated away high speed rail will not be viable.

I’m sure there are many more considerations, including all the political infighting in every municipality the trains will travel through. I cannot imagine this thing ever getting beyond the planning phase, but I am certain the debate, now that it’s started, will never, ever, end.

Californicating With Itself

I went home for lunch and turned on FoxNews and watched reports on two separate, totally unrelated stories.

The first was on the recent California court ruling that illegals in that state are eligible for in-state tuition. California isn’t alone in this – you might be surprised to know that Texas offers the same benefit. Incredulous, I asked myself, “Self, what is the point of in-state tuition? Why give someone a discount just for being a resident?” Universities know that the cost structure for educating some number of students is relatively unaffected by providing education for that number plus 1. Higher education institutions, despite claims to the contrary by professors and administrators who say they are “overworked”, can absorb many more students than are enrolled. The game they play is to extract as much tuition as possible and also as much state subsidy as possible, and encouraging in-state tuition for illegals accomplishes both. The bottom line is that illegal immigrants are good for the business of education.

The problem comes when the professors and administrators who complain about being “overworked” convince enough of the Regents or legislators, depending on the funding source, that they need either more teachers, more administrators, or more infrastructure and buildings to meet the greater demand for education posed by the exploding population of illegal immigrants.

Which leads me to the second story.

Students in California are rioting over proposed 8% college tuition and fee increases in their state.

I wonder how many of them voted Democrat two weeks ago. Do you think they understand cause and effect? Just wait until Jerry Brown gets his hooks into things.

Obama, Foreign Policy Disabled

Clearly the media has dramatically understated the scope of epic failure that was Obama’s foreign policy mission to India and the Far East this month. He completely failed to negotiate even one useful trade agreement. He couldn’t even get the South Koreans, one of our closest allies in the entire world, to agree to a minor addition to the existing trade agreement brokered by President Bush. Basically, Obama wants the rest of the world to agree to buy more American cars, specifically GM so he can give a boost to the IPO and the “Government Motors” debacle won’t be such a bad deal for American taxpayers. Nobody's buying.

Obama is an international laughing stock. Fresh off his party’s historic drubbing at the midterms, the Campaigner-In-Chief’s gravitas is at an all-time low. You’ll remember that he made an ass of himself when he grovelled around the Mideast apologizing for America’s “arrogance”. The message to the world was crystal clear: Obama is weak, and by association the United States is also weak. By the way, the first rule of diplomacy is, ALWAYS NEGOTIATE FROM STRENGTH. So now when Obama says that a strong US economy is good for everyone, he may be right, but he's got no balls so the rest of the world just says, “Whatever, dude.”

Obama further undercut his chances before leaving by signing off on Bernanke's plan to effectively devalue the Dollar. The purpose for this is to make US exports relatively cheaper and therefore more attractive. The problem is that most of these countries also own a significant amount of US debt, which is also devalued! Not only that, but how in the world does Obama expect other countries to enter into binding trade agreements in good faith when he is brazenly unwilling to do the same??? I can’t believe this story is not getting more attention, at the very least for the inexplicably bad timing of the Bernanke maneuver with Obama’s Trade trip.

This has to rank among the absolute worst foreign policy gaffes of all time!!

He couldn’t get one single country to agree to condemn China’s currency manipulation strategy. No shit Sherlock – you've got the US doing it to! Way to go, BO!

Idiot.

Meanwhile, why do we even have a State Department? Still a frighteningly popular figure among Democrats, Hillary was conspicuously deployed oversees during the last two weeks of the campaign season, but during that time she had zero impact priming G20 countries for Obama. What’s that term for a porn actress who’s not attractive enough to be seen on film so she sits off camera and her job is to keep the male star ready to go? Oh yeah, fluffer. Hillary is Obama’s personal fluffer, but apparently she’s terrible at it. That explains Bill’s behavior.

America needs to get rid of these bozos, grow a new pair, and resume telling the world how its gonna go down, or we are Greece in our lifetimes.

The Next 9/11: High Speed Rail

With all the heated discussion about high speed rail, one aspect is consistently overlooked: security. I have yet to hear anyone ask the question, "How do you secure all the rail in this country?" There's nearly a quarter-million miles of track in this country, and every spike and tie is a ripe target for terrorism.

Imagine a fundamental change in transportation infrastructure - Obama's vision for a future without cars. Everyone depends on trains to travel long distances, all in the name of a greener, less polluted world. We learn to tolerate the inconvenience of living by train schedules, traveling only where trains go, and being stuffed together into uncomfortable train cars built for quantity of transference and not quality of travel experience. We simply have no alternatives, the government having legislated in favor of environmentalism.

And then one day a series of small improvised explosive devices, placed along lengths of track no one ever sees except from the inside of a rail car, is detonated, coordinated to cause maximum damage in a single moment of incredible destruction. When trains moving at 90 or 100 miles per hour or more jump track the result will be unlike anything we've seen since September 11, 2001.

It becomes a simple matter for a terrorist organization to kill tens of thousands, and they would not even need to sacrifice to do it. The bombs need only be large enough to derail the lead car - maybe 10 feet of damaged track is all - and the entire train would wreck. The destruction would be awful. And what's more, government would react predictably, shutting down all rail traffic everywhere, disabling an economy with no other means to travel. You thought 9/11 shut us down? Just wait.

If the politicians pushing this idea - mostly Democrats - would admit to the likelihood of such an even, and then were forced to consider the cost of making high speed rail secure, we would quickly come to the consensus that it is unmanageable.

Attacks like this have already occurred - most recently in Spain. But the United States remains the big prize for extremists, and they will bide their time to get the biggest bang for the buck. Believe me, if I took this long to think of this then professional terrorists already have stretches of track in mind.

All they need to do is wait for Democrats to provide them with human targets.

Demise Of The American Century

I was reflecting this weekend on how good life is, despite all the negativity among coworkers and politicians who believe they deserve but are not willing to earn. When you really think about what we have it’s not too bad, and any failings are my own and no one else’s.

This windfall is the direct result of an era of American exceptionalism that many have referred to as “The American Century,” a subset of the Twentieth Century, but more than that because its exact duration is more than 115 years.

It began emphatically on October 9, 1893, when nearly three-quarters of a million people visited the Chicago Columbian Exposition, the greatest exhibit of technological and societal achievement ever presented in one place, and in so doing shattered the attendance record set the previous decade in Paris and signaling to the world that the United States of America had seized a place ahead of Europe on the world’s stage.

And it terminated with equal fanfare with the inauguration of Barack Obama, a bona-fide Communist, as President of these same United States. The message could not have been more clear – a majority of American voters were either apologetic or even openly hostile to the exceptionalism fought for and enjoyed by preceding generations. Obama went to work immediately, apologizing for our arrogance, bowing to the unelected kings and despots of other countries, and deferring to the will of the United Nations in managing affairs of interest to our nation. Legislatively, Democrats went to work plowing under the risk-reward philosophy of capitalism in favor of a new socialist paradigm which discouraged prosperity by hard work, elevated Marxist fairness rhetoric, and destroyed the American Dream.

The American Century is over. Anything resembling a new rise to prominence for Americans will be something different and less durable. History tells us that to recapture a measure of our former glory will take nothing short of Revolution. I believe the revolution has already begun, and after tomorrow’s vote we will take the next step.

In Defense Of Juan Williams

One of the few occasionally rational-minded liberals in the world, Juan Williams, finally got the axe this week from NPR. This was a long time coming – they were just waiting patiently for any reason at all. It’s obvious that NPR brass have been steaming for years that Mr. Williams dared to stray from the reservation and join Fox News as an analyst. As I stated last week, many far-left groups consider Williams a traitor, or even a “conservative.” While I agree that relative to their place on the spectrum he must seem conservative, Juan Williams is a liberal, although an often pragmatic one, which sometimes has led him to accept truth when he sees it to the disdain of his farther-left colleagues at NPR.

Williams admitted what everyone in this country automatically thinks: that he gets nervous when he sees men in full Muslim dress board a plane with him. That was all the justification NPR needed to finally unload him. Naturally, the mainstream reaction to his firing is one of introspection but you can also hear the liberal pundits not affiliated with NPR collectively say, “D’oh!” They realize this is Shirley Sherrod all over again, because anyone who bothered to watch the whole segment saw Juan Williams take Bill O’Reilly to task for O’Reilly’s (correct) assertion that it was Muslims who executed the attacks on America on 9/11. Yeah, it wasn’t all Muslims, but it was a network of people who shared the Islamic faith. Only liberals can seriously debate against irrefutable fact.

I’m waiting to see what Bara Bama does now. He was so quick to admonish Fox News and conservative pundits for his mistakes in the Sherrod scandal, but now he has no one to blame except other libs who swung the axe. What’s he gonna do, blame Fox News for trying to be “Fair and Balanced”?

Likely he will stay out of it and let Williams swing from the gallows. Williams was helping the enemy, after all, by attracting viewers, however progressive his goals might have been. My guess is, whereas Sherrod received a personal apology from the President along with a promotion and a raise, Williams will be treated by the left like a leper. His promotion will come from Fox News, and that will piss the left off even more. They hate nothing more than when conservatives promote minorities based on merit instead of skin color, as liberals are more likely to do. Juan Williams deserves a larger role at Fox News – I’d like to see him with his own primetime show. He could bump Greta back on hour.

Aside from the personal controversy revolving around Williams, the most disgusting aspect of this is all the pundits admitting to self-loathing when they do the very same thing. I’ve read several articles online about this in the last two days and they share the common theme that the pundit is nervous when he/she sees Muslims in full dress on airplanes, and then how much they hate themselves for having such an inappropriate reaction, and how badly those Muslims must feel, blah, blah, blah.

The fact is that, whatever the numbers, Muslims of both sexes and all ages have committed terrible acts against innocent people, and yes, Muslims flew airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11. Every American has the exact same thoughts go through their head, every time. It is an honest and sensible reaction to what happened and to what is indelibly burned into each of our minds forever, and no amount of air travel will scrub it clean. On top of that, it may actually be prudent. On 9/11 none of the people in those planes knew what to do. Prior experience was always that terrorists had some demands, and had no interest in suicide. All that has changed, so if you get on a plane you better have some idea about how you are going to act in that 1 in a 1000000000 chance that the Muslims sitting next to you start hollering in Arabic and lighting fuses leading into their rectums.

We all need to be better Boy Scouts – be prepared. There’s absolutely no shame in that. Juan Williams knows that even though almost nobody else on his side of the aisle does. I like Juan Williams, and I hope this will result in more exposure for him and ultimately expose the far left’s propensity for Big Brother style thought policing and further turn America against those kooks and their like-minded President. That’s the guy we need to fire.

UPDATE: I had written this post earlier today, but it turns out the news is already out - Williams confirmed that NPR was "vindictive" about his relationship with Fox, and Fox has offered him a substantial contract in the wake of all this. Further proving my point, NPR Chief Vivian Schiller said Williams should have "kept his comments between himself and his psychiatrist." It's fun watching the left self destruct, no?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44009.html

Privatize Social Security to Save the Economy

I woke up this morning to sound bites for the Angle-Reid debate last night. The contrast could not have been more stark, and I’m looking forward to the end of Reid. Is there anything worse for your career than to become the Democrat Senate Majority leader?

Reid’s biggest swing was his most predictable, going after Angle’s stance on Social Security. During the primary Angle was a pro-privatize or get rid of it altogether candidate, and she has now stepped back from that a little. Reid is of course a do-nothing Democrat, more than happy to continue to force Americans to throw money into a black hole and not at all shy about admitting they will lose out on the deal. His attack used the tired charge that if Bush had succeeded in privatizing SS in 2005 most Americans would have lost their retirement when the economy crashed.

For some reason, smarter political minds than mine have not mounted a respectable resistance to this claim, but it came to me this morning.

First off, Bush wanted to make privatization optional. Why don’t Republicans ever bring that up? If you’re about ready to retire or already retired, then don’t change anything, and keep sucking on the teat. If you’re young and can take on short term risk for long term gains, privatize. Bush tried hard to get that message across, but the likes of Harry Reid and the Democrats successfully scared enough seniors with their lies that the public never came around to the idea, and unlike Obama, George Bush listened to the people, even though they’d been sold the liberal lie.

But the real master stroke is that if Americans would have been allowed to privatize SS in 2005 we would never have had this degree of financial collapse. Think about it. If every day thousands of US companies received millions in new investment dollars the credit market would not have seized and yeah, the mortgage crisis would still have happened but millions of Americans would not have lost their jobs because American businesses would not have failed when the money ran out. The money would not have run out! President Bush would have prevented this collapse, but Democrats stopped him!

Conservative candidates need to make this point. Today SS money gets turned into an IOU with an ever increasing likelihood of default. If it were privatized it could be invested in American companies and American jobs! And if the economy takes a hit again history is on the side of the investor, whereas the future is against anyone relying on Social Security and its guaranteed 25% loss.

A Shovel Full Of "Shovel-Ready"

The friend of mine I mentioned in a previous post who was working two part-time jobs and starting his own small business after getting laid-off from his previous full-time job now has a new full-time job. This absolutely proves my point that if you walk into a prospective employer and show them that you are a worker, and not just someone who surfs the Internet all day looking for a place to send her resume to, you have a much higher likelihood of getting the job.

What continues to amaze me is how delusional many of this nation’s unemployed are. Manufacturing jobs are not coming back, yet every day I hear the lament for those “good manufacturing jobs” that were lost. I realize the situation for those people is tough – they got into manufacturing when they were young, were often paid well beyond their skill level because of union contracts that ultimately cost them their job when the company was forced to look for cheaper labor elsewhere. Now they still don’t have any skills and no prospects. The world changed while they weren’t paying attention. They were lured into Bama’s slick presentation with the promise of “shovel-ready jobs” but no such thing materialized, despite a trillion dollars worth of wasted idealism.

So now what? It seems highly likely that unemployment will remain around 10% for the foreseeable future. My guess is it will be a generation before we see unemployment back down to 5% like it was during the Bush years. Two things must happen. First, businesses must regain faith that the government will not punish them for success. “Cap And Trade” would be another devastating blow to private sector industry, and must be defeated. It is obvious now that we can either have extreme environmentalism or we can have a prosperous economy, but not both, at least no right now. Obama’s promise to create 5 million new clean energy jobs could still happen, but at the cost of countless jobs lost to layoffs as companies look to cover the higher energy costs. We can move in that direction, but it cannot happen overnight. Increasing government regulation as a knee-jerk reaction to the Bank failures and the mortgage debacle will only hinder company’s attempts to access new revenue streams. The trade war the Democrats are instigating with China will further impact an already massive trade imbalance. And liberal’s continued attacks on CEO salaries and their vilification of corporations has and will continue to result in trepidation or outright unwillingness to expand into markets that are openly hostile to their very existence. Liberalism and its extensions are the root of the demise of capitalism, and they are starting to own up to the fact that they like it that way. Until American voters restore sanity to the political force of the economy it will continue to sputter.

The second requirement is that Americans must become better educated, and I don’t necessarily mean college. In today’s workforce it is much more valuable to be specialized and then find a job that applies that focus than to fumble around with a Liberal Arts degree. Technical colleges will become the primary avenue from which the next generation of workers achieves a functional education. Those who fail to continue education will have limited value in the economy going forward. Those “good jobs” of the past have no relevance, and attempts by unions and Democrats to cling to them for purely political reasons is a drain against the producers of wealth.

“Shovel-ready”, “Hope and Change”. America was sold on meaningless slogans. Obama is nothing more than a catch-phrase comic, with his presidency as the punch line and American liberties as the butt of every joke. Until we get these jokers out of power and then take it upon ourselves to increase our individual value in a competitive global economy collectively we will continue to tread water. On the other hand, for those of us that do choose to better ourselves we should have an easier go of it compared to those that don’t. My friend’s success is proof of that.

Liberals vs. The Truth: A Timeless Matchup

I was going to post last week Friday on the Chamber of Commerce flap, but was too busy, and now I'm glad I waited, because in just 2 days the thing has exploded. In case you don't know, ultra-liberal think tank "Think Progress" accused the Chamber of Commerce of backing political ads favoring Republicans with foreign contributions, which would be illegal, if it were true.

First of all, when I say ultra-liberal, I mean it. "Think Progress" is so far to the left they accuse NPR pundit Juan Williams of being a conservative. I won't link to their garbage website. If you want to read that kind of nonsense just Google it. It's enough to say that "Think Progress" and Democrat Underground occupy the same space on the ideological spectrum.

So they made this charge, without any evidence whatsoever, and now the President of the United States is reciting it as fact. On Friday, NPR did a report on this - is there anyone who doesn't think NPR is part of the media arm of the Democrat party? Anyway, they played a single quote from the "Think Progress" cartell: "We simply don't know where the money comes from."

Ok, so does that mean because you don't know, then it must come from foreign entities? Isn't it also true that if you don't know then you have no evidence and your claim is baseless. On the website, "Think Progress" cites as fact that the Chamber solicits foreign donations and also has not refuted the claim. Well they must be guilty! Obviously, that case is good enough for Bama to go around blabbing like he has a fucking clue about it.

Not suspiciously absent is any kind of real journalism to get to the truth, because the media already knows what it will find, and would prefer to simply refer to the "Think Progress" claim as the news story while letting the prospect of illegality linger. That meets their journalistic standard just fine. This is a tired and desperate old Democrat strategy, and as long as the "Free Press" is comprised 90% of rank-and-file Democrats they will never challenge this kind of bullshit, even from the President.

Say, you know who did take foreign contributions? Bill and Hillary Clinton! Remember when they sold US missle technology secrets to the Chinese for cash?

I'd like to take this opportunity to make some claims of my own. First, Barack Obama was secretly in league with Saddam Hussein, and it's very likely that Obama knows where the WMDs are hidden and may have even tipped Saddam off. I cite as evidence the fact that they share a the name Hussein. This is irrefutable, and it is now Obama's responsibility to prove otherwise!

Second, I charge that "Think Progress" is itself fronted by foreign money, namely the Russians and Iranians, and it is there secret mission to destabilize the Republic of the United States, and I challenge them to prove themselves to the contrary! Btw, I think this might actually be true. Ha!

That's a good start, now if someone would just help spread the truth!

Just Pay With Food Stamps

Recently Congressional Democrats and Obama have touted their spending blitzes for schools and Medicare as being “paid for.” They’ve “paid for” these bills with future deductions in the Food Stamps program. As long as you’re not a liberal, you might wonder, “How do they pay for a program today with money from the future?”

Here’s how it works. Food stamps is a huge social program that expands or contracts based on need. If a person meets the criteria, they get food stamps, otherwise they don’t. Pretty simple. As the program exists, Democrats do not have the ability to deny food stamps to those who meet the requirements. They wouldn’t do that anyway, but they couldn’t if they wanted. Right now, with the economy trudging sluggishly amid the pitfalls of liberal economic policy, food stamp usage is at an all time high. All Bama and his cronies are doing is betting that by the time the bill comes due, food stamp demand will have diminished to the point where the difference covers the government’s financial obligations. Essentially, the government has written an IOU to itself today with the expectation that tomorrow’s food stamp program is costs that much less than it does today. Given Bama’s economic track record so far, I’d say that’s a gamble.

What should upset taxpayers about this is that if the cost of the food stamp program decreases, it doesn’t matter, the savings is already spent, and for something nobody remembers that happened years ago, and for dubious reasons. And if the cost of the food stamp program does not decrease, then we have to incur additional debt to cover the IOU. Either way we lose!

Just another lesson in fiscal discipline from Bama and the Democrats!

Democrats On Social Security: "Do Nothing"

Ron Kind said it this morning on Wisconsin Public Radio: “Even if we do nothing recipients will get 75% of their benefit for 75 years.”

Imagine if someone said to you, “I can offer a retirement plan where I guarantee you will lose at least 25% of your investment.” Would you take it? Seriously?

Republicans should jump all over this, because it amounts to a 25% tax on social security on top of existing taxes on benefits. Either that or Dems raise Social Security taxes on the front end to maintain benefits. The message is clear – Democrats are unwilling to recognize the epic scope of the failure of their most cherished welfare program.

Meanwhile on the economic front, Congressman Kind said that he favors protectionism, essentially, as a strategy for improving the US economy. This must coincide with Obama's decree to "Double exports within five years." Kind wants to hold imports to the same standards we hold ourselves. In other words, the same standards that helped kill American manufacturing - environmentalism, health care, labor progressivism... How can he be that naive?

And right on queue, China launches a preemptive attack, kicking off the trade war that Obama and the Democrats wanted. They are initiating a tariff on chicken imports. Democrats are writing the book on how to destroy capitalism, and don't think for one second that wasn't the plan all along.

The Tea Party has ammuninition for decades.

Gagging On Liberalism

It struck me the other day liberalism is like a food you forget you don’t like. I would suggest that the current political climate extends back to the Carter presidency, as Ford and Nixon were tarnished by Watergate and it’s residuals and prior to that we had three decades of significant war. Since Carter was ousted after a single term, this country has experienced less than 4 total years where Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. In each case – 1994, and again now in 2010, the Democrats are getting shelled in the polls and Republicans are poised to reclaim one if not both houses in dramatic fashion.

Liberalism is clearly a highly toxic substance that America gags on and cannot swallow, but Americans are apparently stupid enough to put it back in their mouths once in a generation. What’s remarkable and dangerous is that Liberals can do so much damage in 2 year intervals, but they have to because that’s all they get, and then they’re shut down until the next batch of voters comes along who have either never tasted the poison or forgotten how bad it was the last time.

The media is quick to say how bad Republicans got shelled in 2006, but that was only after 6 long years of uncontested media reports hammering Bush for every little thing – many of the same things which are overlooked today or receive a wink and a nod. This situation is different – America is making up its own mind.

The good news is this is obviously a conservative leaning country, and it will always gag on liberalism whenever it foolishly tries it out again. On top of that, we understand that there is little room for fiscal liberalism in the Republican party, and as we cleanse it this November – even if we don’t take back the Senate – we setup a more consistent conservatism with better staying power, more resistant to the vice of liberalism.

YOU Are Funding Feingold Attack Ads

I woke up this morning to a disgruntled Wisconsin Public Radio. First they had to report that Ron Johnson has pulled to a significant lead over Russell Feingold. To temper this foul news, they immediately did a report on how Johnson’s latest ad is full of falsehoods and inaccuracies – about as close as they can get to say he’s lying. They referred to his claim that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” Then they explained the definition of a ponzi scheme: using new investor money to pay for commitments to old investors. ?!? How is that not exactly what Social Security is? Then they refute his claim that the money for Social Security is gone, even bringing in a professor of elderly programs. (BTW, I know a good way to cut $70,000 from the UW budget…) She says the money isn’t gone, it’s borrowed. Well that makes it so much better. Apparently accounting tricks are used to say that specific tax dollars go to specific programs, and by moving the money around you can leave a debt trail that shows everything is paid for. Isn’t that something!

It amounted to a free 2 minute attack advertisement against Ron Johnson courtesy of the taxpayers of Wisconsin. Disgusting. I can’t wait to vote!

Tax Cuts Do Not Need To Be “Paid For”

Democrats are framing the tax cut debate by saying things like, “How will these tax cuts for the rich be paid for,” or, “Tax cuts for the rich paid for by the middle class.” This is infuriating class warfare, and it’s a desperate tactic, but so far conservatives have done a terrible job refuting the premise of the Democrat argument.

Their argument says two things very clearly: they are unwilling to reduce government spending, and they consider tax money as belonging to the government. The second point is the most insidious because they, the government, control how much money they take from the people who earn it.

Conservatives need to change the debate. Whenever a Democrat asks how a tax cut for the rich will be paid for, turn it around and ask them point blank, “How can you defend tax hikes on the producers in the economy when government spending is out of control? The premise that tax cuts need to be paid for implies spending cannot be reduced. Reject that premise! We should always be looking for ways to reduce government spending and allow hard-working Americans to keep more of the money they earn. Don’t pit people against each other – we’re all in this economy together, and when you take more from those who have achieved some modest financial prosperity then you tarnish the American dream!”

Challenge Democrats to defend all the egregious spending. Look at the headlines this week about government contracts for the Gulf cleanup effort. $52,000 for a “marine charter for things.” That’s more than most people make in a year! $90,000 for boat anchors, nearly $6 million for helicopter services – how many helicopters could they possibly need? And it goes on and on and on. That BP is getting the bill does not grant government a license to waste money. Remember last year, when “stimulus” money went to congressional districts that don’t even exist? Every American should be infuriated by this nonsense, regardless of political leanings!

What is the Democrat plan to pay for Social Security in the next thirty years? Don't tell me it's paid for, we all know the lockbox is empty. Will they just continue to raise taxes to fund broken programs? Change the debate - make Democrats answer for relentless government spending!

Tired Old Tricks

This morning on the Early Show Gibbsy was interviewed about the economy and the host mentioned Senator Boehner's plan to reduce Federal spending down to 2008 levels as a solution to the current massive Bama deficits.

Gibbsy replied by reminding us that Bama has proposed spending freezes on non-security discretionary spending, but also "We can't afford to give $700 Billion to the rich paid for by the middle class." Huh?

Boehner's proposal makes the $700 Billion into Zero! Boehner wants to reduce the deficit and extend the Bush tax cuts. The nerve!

Doesn't he know that it's more important to steal from the rich to fuel Bama's socialism while lubricating the gears of class warfare?

Democrats are so transparent.

The Cost Of Taxes

I must be slipping. I missed a golden chance to highlight the quintessential difference between Democrats and conservatives. Bara Bama said it himself. Economists say extending the Bush tax cuts to those who make more than $250,000 will cost $700 billion over the next decade.

Cost.

It will cost the government money.

You see? Democrats, and our elected Campaigner-In-Chief, think of all of our money as belonging to the government. Like we're only borrowing it instead of the other way around.

The biggest problem with the current economic debate is that most Americans don't catch this critical difference in philosophy. Conservatives believe that those who earn are actually entitled to what they earn. Democrats and the government think that they are entitled to what is made by those who earned it. And if people start to catch on Democrats up the ante by framing those who earn as somehow having swindled their way to ill-gotten-gains, so better off the government takes it.

This is the essence of the Tea Party movement; the assertion that government doesn't earn anything, it only takes from those that do. And then who is government accountable to? Taxpayers? Yeah right. Voters? Hardly. Lobbyists? Sure, for the money, but the truth is that government is accountable only to the ideology that drives it. And that ideology is liberalism.

Our Desperate President

Bama's "Perfect example" of a failed policy that led us toward a depression is the Bush Tax cuts, which in the same breath he says he wants to make permanent for 97% of people. What a clown. But of course he can't say, "Bush Tax cuts" because then his lie would be exposed. He can only survive as a politician for both attacking Bush while taking credit for Bush's successes. He's also claiming as his own the Republican tax cuts included as part of the "stimulus". Democrats didn't want them but Republicans demanded it and held their ground. Now Bama is using that to highlight his good record on taxes. Yeah, right.

Now Democrats are saying extending the tax cuts to the remaining 3%, those making more than $250,000 a year, will cost the country $700 Billion over the next ten years. First of all, you can never, never, trust a Democrat with a number. But even if we again take that number at face value, it ignores the principle that almost all economists have come to understand, that the "wealthy" don't just stuff money into Swiss Bank accounts; they buy things and look to invest. If you allow them to keep their money they will use it! That's how the economy works, that's how innovation is is financed, and that's how jobs are created in healthy sectors.

Bama keeps saying Republicans will put us in reverse. WTF? Democrats are the ones in love with unsustainable manufacturing jobs because of their incestuous relationship with Unions. Those are the jobs that will cause this economy to fail. We can't go back there in a global economy. How can people not see that? Rational people do.

He keeps blaming the "determined minority" for his inability to do everything. Then he also demands leadership. What a loser. Donald Trump would have fired this guy day one.

Oh, and there's this looming agency whose sole responsibility it will be to "Protect families' financial transactions." Holy sh!t - that deserves a post in itself, but that stinks of Nanny State policy!

He just sounds so desperate, and he can't stop whining.

Islamophobia? Absolutely!

Not surprisingly the media and all of the pundits are missing the critical element in this whole Qur'an burning thing by the pastor in Florida. What most people don't know is what justification this pastor has. Why would anyone want to burn a holy book?

The justification he has is exactly the same justification Muslims around the world use when they burn Christian Bibles. Their fundamentalism prohibits them from allowing another view of religion. Their way is the only way, and any other view is heresy and is not tolerated.

Now you know that may be the justification, and it doesn't make it right, but there's also a lot of human emotion clouding the judgment of those doing the burning. My guess is Pastor Jones might also believe this is a pretty good PR device for his church given the visceral reaction of a majority of Americans to the proposed Mosque site in lower Manhattan.

All of that belies the real issue here: that America is now a country that operates out of fear of Muslims. The Mosque people want to call us Islamophobic. Damn right we are! Because every time any little thing happens like this some crazy radical Muslim straps a bomb onto their teenage daughter and blows up a bus full of people. These people are f*cking crazy! Meanwhile, they are allowed to burn Bibles and American flags and our Presidents in effigy and chant, "Death to the Great Satan!" and elect leaders who openly do the same on the world stage, and we're just supposed to passively sit by and hope to God they don't ever get the Bomb because we all know what will happen next. Of course they are not afraid of retaliation because Bama has already said nukes are off the table as long as he's in charge.

That's pussy-diplomacy, courtesy of Bama and Hillary, where the USA is always wrong regardless of what atrocities other societies commit. President Bush was absolutely right. The Bush Doctrine scared the crap out of the Muslim world, but then Rumsfeld and the Free Press combined to make a mockery out of what could have been a resounding victory.

So yes, burning Qur'an is stupid, or as Governor Palin put it, "Unnecessarily provocative," but we shouldn't allow ourselves as a free society to be ruled by fear.

Why I Think What I Think About Race

Given the recent potential for my commentary to be read by more than four people I felt the need to go through my posts and try to read them from the perspective of someone who has never met me or conversed with me and has no idea about my beliefs beyond the words accumulated in this blog. I reached one stark conclusion: It is likely that my comments regarding race will be considered inflammatory by those inclined to be offended by such frank and unfiltered language. I have made no attempt to censor myself and have always written what I think at the time, and in reading the body of my efforts here there is definitely a trend toward viewing the problems afflicting this country through the lens cut by those who created the problems, and this lens, despite the promise of a post-racial era affected by the election of Barack Obama, is increasingly tinted.

Let me start by saying that to the best of my ability as a white man I try to understand the concerns of non-whites and women in this country, but I will not be apologetic for being who I am. This is the core of my belief system - no one can control their race or the social circumstances of their birth and upbringing, and I will not judge anyone on that basis, but I will also not tolerate being judged for being white and male. The perceived disparities that result from race and sex in this country are not my fault, and in my life I have not caused any person or group to be in any way disenfranchised.

Do I generalize about race? Yes, but only in the context of circumstances created by those who presume to target people along racial lines for the purpose of gaining or increasing power over the targeted group. Please understand - I want everyone to succeed in life and be happy. I want this for myself and my family and friends, but I also desperately want it for others I don't even know, with the exception of anyone who's ideals would then infringe on other's ability to meet their own personal goals and succeed and be happy. So when I say things like, Obama has lower expectations for "black folks" kids, it's because the statement is observationally true. The quotes exist because those are Barack Obama's own words, and I use them no less often than he does. You might read that and think there's no evidence he thinks that way, but its clear in the context of his speeches that is exactly what he thinks, not out of any malice or pity but because he sees the circumstances of those "folks" as something that is an absolute for the purposes of defining his ideology.

"You're unfairly generalizing," you say. Maybe, but so does Obama. He's a world-class generalizer; just read his words and count how many times he refers to people by class or race or sex, or says "some people," or "many people." He's one of the great generalizers of all time. I generalize to show the absurdity of his generalizations. So then you say, "He's black, so he can talk frankly about black people, but you're white so the same rules don't apply." I don't even feel the need to defend myself against that argument, as it shows the true lack of depth of the racial discussion in this country. When you allow one group to define the rules of an argument you lose the ability to assert your point effectively. Typically it is the self-proclaimed leaders of these groups who make the rules so only they can be right about whatever it is they want to say, and any dissension from that narrow line of thought is then vilified. This is how the current tenor of racial discussion in this country reverberates. As a white man I am only permitted to agree with the premise of any racial issue or I am automatically a racist. You can see how this undermines any useful discussion revolving race in America.

Critical for Democrats and so-called "progressives" is to maintain the facade that they care about the needs of these minority groups, while Republicans and conservatives do not. The truth is that while Democrats may be genuinely empathic of the human condition, they are completely incapable of doing anything to help. This is proven out by nearly fifty years of liberal programs aimed at helping minorities, but the results are that more minorities fail to graduate high school, have children out of wedlock, get into trouble with the law and fail to meaningfully contribute to society or make a stable, prosperous life for themselves and their children. The reason for this failure is twofold: First, subsidies and handouts have diminished the need for many people to achieve a better standard of living for themselves. If you can get by with almost no effort, why would you work hard and take on personal risk for just the possibility of achieving success in life? Humans are creatures of habit, and like lightning our tendency is toward the path of least resistance. Naturally many people become dependent on these programs because they know no other way to live. Starting your own business, with all the perceived legal and bureaucratic obstacles, must seem impossible, and so these communities survive but almost never prosper.

The second reason is more insidious, and no politician would admit to it, but Democrats need for racial minorities to continue to be dependent on them and their government programs. The logic in that is undeniable, and voting trends prove it out.

What upsets me so greatly is that minorities, specifically blacks, rarely seem to see the truth behind the curtain. 97% of those that voted chose the same old self-destructive liberal policies that have failed them for three generations. But I understand that mindset - when you are continually told that everyone else is against you, and you cannot succeed on your own merits, and you need to listen to your local community organizers because nobody else cares about you - that kind of thought is pervasive but it tends to stick because, again, it's the path of least resistance. Challenging the status quo is difficult, and if you really don't believe it will get you where you want to go you won't even try. That's why the conservative belief of self-reliance is so important. It's why Jackie Robinson campaigned for Republicans - he saw the power in that message in the face of the alternative.

My message is not politically-correct, and it's not polite, but I absolutely believe that a commitment to hard work can rescue anyone from any set of circumstances. They just need to believe in themselves and not government or anyone who offers them a handout in lieu of the hard truth about success in life. It takes hard work and nothing short of that will do. You can't just want something and then wait for it to be handed to you. Go work for it! Earn it! Overcome the obstacles in your way! Believe in yourself, and don't let anyone tell you you can't do it without their help! I was raised poor and watched my parents make better lives for themselves and for me and my siblings through hard work and personal sacrifice. I've seen first hand what it takes, and I have absolute faith everyone can do the same if they just believe in themselves and in the prospects for a better future.

Am I naive? For the sake of our country I hope not. But I will continue to call it the way I see it until everyone understands what brand of sugar water those Democrat carpetbaggers are peddling. If I am frank it is because I care, and not because I want your vote or care if you agree with me or ever read my blog again. I believe the only way we will ever break down barriers between groups is if people stop listening to those who say we can't and start doing for ourselves, regardless of where we start from.

Government Abuse Of Power Alert

You probably know Roger Clemens was a pitcher with the Yankees who was forced to testify two years ago about whether he took performance enhancing drugs. He told the U.S. Senate he never had, and later test results and sworn testimony contradicted his claim. So it’s pretty clear he lied to the government.

So what? The government lies to us all the time, and about a lot more important things than whether some sports star took drugs that aren’t even illegal in order to improve his ability to play a game. It pains me that President Bush put himself on the front lines with this in the State of the Union speech, no less, but the witch hunts were driven by Democrats who wanted to destroy wealthy athletes and score cheap political points with the middle-class male sports fan who they otherwise have nothing in common with. There’s no way they did it for the integrity of the game or whatnot – they might be fans or even purists, but big deal, now quit lying to me about how you’re paying for Social Security!!

Roger Clemens will probably get about a year in prison and have to pay a $1 million dollar fine – to the government – for lying under oath. That’s quite a bit more serious than what Bill Clinton got, and of course Bara Bama will never get taken to task for all his lies and the fiscal destruction he has wrought on this country. What’s the penalty for treason these days? Probably a statue on the front lawn, or maybe they’ll paint the Washington Monument with a more diverse color palette.

I don’t feel bad for Clemens – he’s an ass and a liar, but no private citizen should have to be dragged in front of that idiot firing squad full of pompous pricks who’ve done far, far worse in their lives, and then have to answer questions about something that has nothing to do with the government and be taken to the woodshed for his answers. Where’s the frickin’ ACLU on this one? Oh right, Clemens is white. Nevermind.

Jon Stewart Is An Ass Clown

There’s a bit of infuriating banter from last week about FoxNews contributing $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. This is apparently proof that only Republicans receive endless money from evil corporations, and even more proof that FoxNews is anything but “fair and balanced,” and is in fact a front for the Republican Party. We know this because no less of a credible investigative authority than Jon Stewart made a huge deal out of it, and he is as unbiased as they come.

And Barack Obama is a moderate. Yeah, right.

So it took just five minutes of digging to find that Rupert Murdoch/FoxNews also gave $1.02 million to Democrats. During the 2008 election cycle he gave $400,000 directly to Obama, but only $80,000 to McCain. I agree with Stewart that indicates bias, but it isn’t the way he spins it.

And what about NBC and MSNBC, supposedly FN’s cable rival? In years past parent company GE has given millions to Democrats! Hey Jonny Stew – when are you going to start complaining about that egregious flushing of dollars into Democrat campaign coffers? Stewart is a first-rate ass clown, which is why he hangs on to the only gig that will have him on Comedy Central. It’s telling that he keeps winning Emmy awards, isn’t it? Let’s see, Hollywood, where are your campaign contributions going? I can tell you it ain’t to Republicans.

I’ll say it again. Thank God for FoxNews. At least somebody is sending money to Republicans.

Lying With Numbers

My freshman year in college I did a report on the Drake Equation, which can be used to determine the probability that intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy.

The Drake equation states that:


where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

So that’s all pretty interesting but I’m sure you can see with just a quick read that almost none of the variable values in the equation is known with any great deal of certainty. It’s the sort of thing that makes for good sci-fi but bad science. My result was something like 100 such civilizations, but I could have easily said zero or 1,000,000 – the equation has little actual value beyond its novelty.

The same is exactly true anytime a Democrat says any number. Any number at all. Whenever a Democrat says a number it is meaningless, because no number they ever say is in any way associated with fact.

Take the EduJobs bill that passed last week. We were told this would absolutely save “300,000 teacher’s jobs.” Bara Bama himself cited that number, and he’s already added the tally to his total of 150 bazillion jobs “created or saved.” But where did the 300,000 come from? If you haven’t visited, there’s an outstanding education blog here: http://www.eiaonline.com/communique.htm

This guy is first rate at unwrapping all the veiled lies of the teacher’s unions and their cohorts in the Democrat party, and he does several articles on EduJobs. To summarize, the numbers for EduJobs are a fabrication. “300,000” originally started as “100,000”, and “teacher’s jobs” was originally just any “education job.”

No less than the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, vastly distorts whatever the facts are to make the case for this kickback to education professionals with this gem: “We always said between 100,000 and 300,000. We had a broad range there… because this was a moving target.” He then followed up with this: "So, I think the reality… is the vast majority of districts around the country have literally been cutting for five, six, seven years in a row. And, many of them you know are through you know fat, through flesh, and into bone.” I don’t know what planet Arne Duncan lives on, but it isn’t Earth and it’s definitely not one of the other hundred or so “intelligent” civilizations out there.

The facts are that over the past seven years he’s referring to total student enrollment K-12 in the U.S. has increased only 1.6%, while total number of teachers has increased by 4% and the amount spent annually per pupil on salaries for educators has increased an astounding 26.4%! And this is US Census Bureau data, so Duncan knows it too well, but chooses to lie and distort the facts to pad the coffers of the teacher’s unions and education professionals, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

The blog cites the State of Alaska, which has budget surpluses almost every year because of the oil there, as being specifically told by the NEA that teacher layoffs were imminent, despite the fact that Alaska continues to increase school funding and leads the nation in percentage increase of teacher’s pay. They were never going to lay off anyone, but they still get $23.5 million from EduJobs.

WTF?? This is the kind of flagrant disregard for taxpayer money that is exactly the reason Democrats have zero credibility on the economy. More than that, I believe it is obvious quid pro quo, as Democrats have clearly just given their a powerful voter pool a $10 billion kickback. What I wouldn’t give to see some of these state’s Attorney’s General go after them in court! Maybe I should send this to Van Hollen…

Pay Go Away

So the Democrats last week attached $16 billion in emergency funding for Medicare to fill states budget gaps. Umm, didn't Bama partially fund Obamacare by taking $500 billion out of Medicare? Is there a single rational person on the planet who actually believes one dime will be cut from Medicare?

Democrats will continue to stuff these "emergency" measures into bill after bill after bill until they have covered the $500 billion and then some.

It is laughable that Democrats think they can run on fiscal responsibility. It is no stretch to say they have shown nothing but contempt for the very concept.

Health Insurers: Comply Or Die!

This is the time of year when private sector companies allocate benefits for the next calendar year, and with that has come the first evidence of the true impact of Obamacare. Primary attention will be given to the nationwide epidemic of insurance premium hikes, and the incredulity from politicians as to why it’s happening, and their equally incredulous response to a situation they themselves created.

I heard the first reports on the radio just yesterday, including one baffling account from an “Insurance agent who could not understand why his company’s premiums were going up by 25%.” That agent is an absolute moron, and he’s not alone.

One of the stipulations of Obamacare is a requirement that 85% of revenues (80% for “small businesses”) be spent on benefit payouts. In the industry this is called the “Medical Loss Ratio (MLR).” 85% is about the high-water mark for the industry, with the average about 10-15 points lower. This arbitrary requirement was installed to appease the extremist single-payer crowd. You might ask, “Well how does this affect single-payer?” Included in the law is creation of a review agency to identify private insurance companies who are increasing premiums, at which point the government has given itself the authority to essentially put that company out of business. Do that often enough and the private insurance industry will collapse and voila! Single-Payer.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say your insurance company currently has revenues of $150 million. In the insurance biz this makes you a small fry, but you’re doing your best to grow your customer base and expand your business while delivering for your employees and shareholders. Of that $150 million, you currently spend $100 million on benefit payouts, $40 million on the costs of doing business, and you’ve managed a profit of $10 million. That sounds like a lot, but it’s only 6.67% of total revenues, which is about the industry average or maybe a little higher. Unfortunately your MLR is at the lower end of the industry average at 66.67%, and now Obama and his anti-capitalist progressives are gunning to put your greedy butt out of business. The message is simple: Comply or die.

But you’ve got big problems. The costs of doing business are what they are. You need a building and an IT infrastructure and an Internet presence and Marketing and claims processors and agents and administrative staff and Legal then you also need a small army of accountants and another building full of people whose job it is just to make sure you’re business complies with all those government regulations, new and existing, at all levels from Federal to Municipal. You may be able to make a few cuts to payroll and find some savings in IT by outsourcing everything that isn’t already outsourced, but the reality is that, as a small insurance company, your customer base is not large enough to balance those bare minimum fixed costs of doing business and achieve an 85% MLR.

Luckily, you’ve been a good taxpayer and friend of the community, and have been liberal with campaign contributions – which also add to your costs – so you can call your Congressman and be deemed small enough to hit the 80% MLR slot. Ok, but you still have a long way to go to meet the Federal standard and stay in business.

As a small company, you have relied on ingenuity in your product offerings to maximize profits. You currently offer a wide array of services in the region of preventative care, such as encouraging customers to exercise and eat healthy, including incentives such as discounted memberships to fitness clubs and details about local CSA’s and recommending healthy lifestyle choices, etc., and you’re also working directly with physicians to help your customers make well-informed choices about care. As a result you’ve managed to keep premiums relatively low, but now because of the Federal MLR mandate you need to make some difficult choices.

Now keep in mind that benefit payout is largely beyond your control, but you have a solid algorithm for predicting total payout costs annually based on customer base and several well-understood industry specific variables. The bottom line: unless you take on more customers and higher risk, the $100 million will not significantly change.

So you’re stuck with two choices: find a way to reduce non-benefit costs or sell the company. You decide to try to make it work. So the first thing you do is eliminate all the services for preventative care, which allows you to scale back your IT presence and fire several hundred people who comprised your Preventative Care division, including dozens of on staff nurses, nurse practitioners, and those expensive consulting fees charged by physicians and other health-care industry types. You freeze all pay – no raises for the foreseeable future. You also sacrifice the future for the present, and eliminate half your Marketing team. You fire an entire tier of middle-management and reorganize the corporate reports structure. You have transformed into a flatter but less versatile company with the single objective of filling claims and surviving into the next fiscal year.

Congratulations! You’ve saved the company. You had to fire a third of your workforce and discontinue all value-added services, and as a result your customer base is less healthy overall, but you’ve met the federal mandate. Obamacare works!

But wait, now that your customer base is less healthy your seeing more claims, and your benefit payout spikes to $125 million. You had cash on hand to cover this event, but you need to plan for it for next year, and since you’re operating at a razor thin profit margin as it is, the only option is to increase premiums.

This time you can’t escape – you need to raise premiums by at least 20%, but that will inversely affect MLR because a hike in premiums is revenue! You decide to do it anyway, but 6 months later the Federal auditors deliver their papers and you are forced out of business.

Companies that cannot reduce costs must raise premiums while taking on additional risk. It is a fine line and a game in which the deck is intentionally stacked against the industry. The government wants insurance companies to fail. That’s the whole point. If insurance companies are forced to raise premiums, Democrats can score cheap political points by vilifying the private sector while taking steps toward Single-payer! Obama and Democrats have purposefully created a system to destroy American companies and cause the loss of millions more jobs, just so they can then implement a system under which they control every aspect of your health and lifestyle.

You think this won’t happen? Wake up, America, it’s happening already!

The Messiah Returns (At Last)

I almost forgot the funniest part of Bama's speech on Monday. He said that he, "Will call for a doubling of exports in the next 5 years."

Good, that's done then.

Just today there's a report that the trade gap is the widest it's ever been - nearly $50 Billion every month, or about the same level as when Bama took office. Now there's change you can believe in!

Meanwhile, the Feds have announced another $3 Billion in giveaways to people who exercised their Democrat-given right to own a house regardless of their ability to pay for it. The newest bailout includes interest-free loans of up to $50,000!

And in the same vein a riot broke out in Atlanta today when thousands of people waited up to 2 days in the heat just to get an application for a rent subsidy. That's right - they weren't waiting for the money, they were waiting for the application for the money. And yes, there were signs saying that everyone who was in line by this afternoon would get an application. No money, just an application. Two days in line, in the heat. For an application. Yeah, some people are really, really stupid. What I'm wondering is why someone from the office didn't say anything to the assembled mob like, "You don't have to stay here for two days. We have plenty of applications and can always print more if needed." Or maybe someone did but the mob said, "It's ok, I got nuthin' better to do with my life." That's sad, but not surprising that it turned violent. If you look online for the pictures you'll see the whole story, and know that 99% of those people voted for Bama.

Diff'rent Strokes

Bama gave another stump speech in Austin yesterday and again spent the majority of his time on education. This is the sort of topic Dems love to trot out for election cycles – it’s a bread and butter issue for them because the volume of their good intentions is rivaled only by their track record of spectacular failure. Concurrent with the campaigning from Bama is the big House vote to approve $26 Billion in emergency dollars to save “Hundreds of thousands” of teacher’s jobs. Bama is very specific about this: this money will prevent hundreds of thousands of teachers from being fired before the new school year. He couldn’t be any more clear. And yet it’s a bunch of BS. Some portion of $10 Billion will go to the general funds of the states with the soft mandate that it should be used to plug holes in education spending. The obvious problem is that states make state budgets, not the US Congress, so if there are budget holes then the states have irresponsibly appropriated their own funding. The more likely scenario is that this money will get used for any number of pet projects within states that invariably have nothing to do with education.

Oh wait, what about the other $16 Billion? No surprise, the majority of this spending will go to plug other holes in state budgets. We actually have 2 RINO’s to blame – those “Republican” senators from Maine are always messing things up. This time they sold their votes for $70 million to plug a hole in Medicaid spending, so naturally if they got it every other state wanted it, too. Where the hell is the leadership in that body?

Real Republicans have opposed all these spending blitzes on the grounds that enough is enough – pay for it like you said you would! What happened to “Pay-Go?” Did anyone believe a Democrat could really stick to paying for anything? Democrats are saying they have paid for this by “Curbing corporate tax loopholes” and also with the expected reduction in foodstamp usage, starting in 2014, because the economy will be so great by then. Wait a minute – 2014?? Tax loopholes??? How can you pay for something today with money from the future? And why didn’t you close those loopholes 18 months ago, the first chance you got after Bama took the throne? This reminds me of that Popeye character who’d say, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” (Just searched online – Wimpy’s famous line is a well-established tool for illustrating just this sort of fiscal dishonesty.)

Because they’re bullshitting America, that’s why. They haven’t paid one dime for this, and they never intend to. They don’t feel the need to pay for anything as long as they control the press and the people who run it are unionized.

The bottom line is that there’s absolutely no justification for Bama’s outrageous claims to save jobs and there’s no actual money to pay for this scam. It’s a political stunt and a small bailout for states who follow the federal paradigm and spend what they don’t have because they figure – correctly – that Democrats will always come around to hand out cash as long as they can make a campaign stop out of it. This teachers-jobs crisis is a total election stunt to try to save what should obviously be a lost cause.

Now on to the speech itself. Remember just 10 days ago when Bama was talking to the Urban League and he told them that he doesn’t only talk about parenting to “black folks?” Well, he talked about education for 20 minutes and never said a single word about parents to these “white folks.” What’s more, his message to the Urban League seemed to place College as this lofty aspiration, an almost unreachable thing, and his primary focus was just getting “black folks” kids though high school or even just grade school. Well, no such problems in Austin – he never mentions high school. This speech was all about college. I think his message is pretty clear – he expects a lot less of “black folks” kids, and that’s too bad, but that’s the Democrat Party today – quietly as racist as they ever were, regardless of who the President is.

And it occurs to me that "Race to the Top" can never work – with its rigorous application process and merit requirements – as long as Democrats are all too eager to undercut the program by throwing cash at every school where a teacher’s job may be on the line. Shouldn’t this be obvious? Does anyone in Washington ever think before they act? It’s all a scam!