Of course Jimmy Carter's an anti-Semite. The guy has blatthered at length over the last decade his affinity for the Palestinian cause and his belief that the Jews are in the wrong and at fault for the continuing conflict in that region.
Now that Candidate-In-Chief Barack Obama has espoused essentially the same point of view in admonishing Israel for its West Bank settlements and even threatening to shoot down Israeli jets over Iraqi airspace, he has been honored with the world's most notorious prize for anti-Semitism, the Nobel Peace Prize.
Also, quite a lot has been made during the last 4 weeks about the lack of communication between Bama and his commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal had been trying to talk to his boss for weeks and was being ignored. Then Bama comes back from Copenhagen and finally sits down to talk about the future of our military presence in the region.
So why the wait? What did Bama's trip to pitch for the Olympics have to do with Afghanistan? Now we know. Bama almost certainly knew he was in the running for the Peace prize, and while in Copenhagen an emissary from Oslo got the message to him, the Prize is yours, just don't blow it. That's why he went to Copenhagen, not for the United States, but for his own ego.
Now that he's won the prize, expect a half-ass response for McChrystal. Enough troops to keep the situation in limbo another 2 years, and then a dramatic pull out in 2012 when the whole thing has fallen apart. The more appropriate response, the response Bush took in Iraq, would be to send in a troop force capable of winning, or at least cleaning out the organized elements of the Taliban. In other words, another surge. But that would look bad for the Nobel committee, and even the pundits this morning agree that this award is more of a proactive attempt to affect Bama's policy with regards to the Middle-East, even as the idiots in Oslo claim they are rewarding Bama's good intentions to make America a better world citizen.
And what is that all about? The United States is not in the business of bowing to dictators, even though Bama is. He does not represent us, and not even a majority approve of the job he's doing anymore. We don't need him to apologize for us, as if he speaks on behalf of every American. That's infuriating. This guy is a clown, only in it to fulfill a prophecy he and the media created for himself. Nothing short of the humiliation of Americans and the destruction of American values will suffice, and that's exactly why he's so popular in Oslo.
By the way, before Carter, Woodrow Wilson was the last American president to win the Peace Prize. Being a bigot and anti-Semite may not be a requirement for winning the prize, but it obviously helps.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
How to Win in Afghanistan
The biggest problem we have in Afghanistan is the same problem we had in Iraq: American troops cannot secure the borders to contain the fight. Militants stream across the mountains from Pakistan everyday, and there's no way to stop them within the confines of Afghanistan. That's why we were launching drone attacks into Pakistan, but those only succeeded in inciting the Pakistanis against us.
Bama's current strategy is failing, and McChrystal's request for more troops may also not be enough. We're hearing today that many of our servicemen on the ground do not understand the goals of this conflict, and who can blame them? Afghanistan has no resources to exploit and no clout in the region. Victory there means freedom for it's people from the medieval Taliban regime, but for how long? I used to think freedom would instill desire to protect freedom from oppression, but that's not happening in America, so how can we expect it to happen anywhere else, especially in states such as Afghanistan that have no resources of their own to fight the well-funded extremist advances in the region.
So either the US needs to mount a thorough offensive with a lot more troops and remain installed to police the country from extremism indefinitely, or we need a new strategy that will reduce the burden on the troops inside the borders to focus on those Taliban forces and then turn it over to the Afghans to control their own destiny.
Here's the only way I see this working: The United States needs to incite a major conflict between Pakistan and India and secretly support India. At the same time, we need to use Bama's new-found influence with Russia, at the same time apply pressure with the continued presence in Poland and Russia's neighbors, to strictly control their own regional border with Afghanistan. The cost of prosecuting the war today would be shifted to the new strategy, but we'd be able to pull our troops out of Afghanistan after cleaning up the Taliban inside the borders, while the insurgents that had previously streamed in from Pakistan now focus on their sworn blood enemy, India. With the external pressure relieved, victory in Afghanistan becomes more clear, and as long as Pakistan/India does not escalate beyond a conventional conflict we can fund it indefinitely.
Insidious? Yes. This is definitely a move worthy of Emperor Palpatine, but it is also a path to victory, whatever that means.
The other remaining option is that we pull out of Afghanistan and then just try to kill Taliban remotely using drones or Special Forces, but that did not work too well at the beginning of the war, so the aim would be to continue to disrupt Taliban efforts to consolidate power for as long as possible while surveying the region for terrorist camps and then hitting them with drones and missiles and the occasional bomber run.
Bama would never go for it, and it's probably a bad idea, but we're pretty low on good plans right now.
At least with Bama we always have hope!
Bama's current strategy is failing, and McChrystal's request for more troops may also not be enough. We're hearing today that many of our servicemen on the ground do not understand the goals of this conflict, and who can blame them? Afghanistan has no resources to exploit and no clout in the region. Victory there means freedom for it's people from the medieval Taliban regime, but for how long? I used to think freedom would instill desire to protect freedom from oppression, but that's not happening in America, so how can we expect it to happen anywhere else, especially in states such as Afghanistan that have no resources of their own to fight the well-funded extremist advances in the region.
So either the US needs to mount a thorough offensive with a lot more troops and remain installed to police the country from extremism indefinitely, or we need a new strategy that will reduce the burden on the troops inside the borders to focus on those Taliban forces and then turn it over to the Afghans to control their own destiny.
Here's the only way I see this working: The United States needs to incite a major conflict between Pakistan and India and secretly support India. At the same time, we need to use Bama's new-found influence with Russia, at the same time apply pressure with the continued presence in Poland and Russia's neighbors, to strictly control their own regional border with Afghanistan. The cost of prosecuting the war today would be shifted to the new strategy, but we'd be able to pull our troops out of Afghanistan after cleaning up the Taliban inside the borders, while the insurgents that had previously streamed in from Pakistan now focus on their sworn blood enemy, India. With the external pressure relieved, victory in Afghanistan becomes more clear, and as long as Pakistan/India does not escalate beyond a conventional conflict we can fund it indefinitely.
Insidious? Yes. This is definitely a move worthy of Emperor Palpatine, but it is also a path to victory, whatever that means.
The other remaining option is that we pull out of Afghanistan and then just try to kill Taliban remotely using drones or Special Forces, but that did not work too well at the beginning of the war, so the aim would be to continue to disrupt Taliban efforts to consolidate power for as long as possible while surveying the region for terrorist camps and then hitting them with drones and missiles and the occasional bomber run.
Bama would never go for it, and it's probably a bad idea, but we're pretty low on good plans right now.
At least with Bama we always have hope!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Hollywood is F***ing Dumb.
This post is primarily a movie review, but it is also politically relevant.
I was suffering a bit of insomnia last night and flipped to HBO after the ESPN bonus coverage of the MNF Packer-Viking game. The movie in progress was Shoot 'Em Up, an action movie that aspired to the slick stylings of the latest James Bond films, and with similar star power; Clive Owen played the dashing but dour, square-jawed hero to Paul Giamatti's archetypal one-dimensional completely evil villain.
The plot of the movie, if you can call it that, is that the hero, Smith, is trying to uncover some conspiracy that has something to do with infant bone marrow and a Democrat senator who is the front runner for the presidency because of his anti-gun stance. He's also a cripple and needs the marrow, so he's icky because he's breeding babies for the sole purpose of harvesting the marrow to treat himself. Unfortunately for the senator the major gun manufacturer has caught on and kills all the babies, except one, which has been saved by Smith.
The gun king has employed Paul Giamatti to find and kill the last baby to cover their tracks, so Paul, who just knows people, which is how it's explained that he is able to find Smith so easily, hires about 50 goons with automatic weapons to storm Smith's abandoned warehouse safehouse.
Unfortunately for Smith, he wasn't able to afford all the guns he wanted, so he gets a single box of shells for his pistol.
Now, there's also a woman in the film who's sole purpose is to breastfeed this baby Smith is trying to keep safe, but she's clearly a romantic interest if only Smith wasn't so disturbed.
I probably missed the part at the beginning of the movie where the story explains how Smith is so good at killing things, but it doesn't really matter. We do know that he has really good vision because he eats lots of carrots.
Once the goons start assaulting the warehouse, Smith kills nearly all of them. At first, because he has to conserve ammo, he kills about 10 guys with a single shot at each, all the while he's running directly at them and carrying the baby in his left arm. That's right - he's carrying the baby the whole time. Miraculously, none of the goons can hit him with their automatic weapons from 10 feet away, even as he has to rush them and wait for the perfect shot to conserve ammo. At the end of this scene he manages to pick up one of the sub-machine guns off a dead goon, jump out to a zip wire extending from the ceiling into the large, open square stairwell, and while he's spinning around and zipping down the line, he's shooting the goons on the stairwell, all while cradling the baby. He kills dozens of guys on his 10 second descent to the floor, all the while every one of them is shooting back, but they just can't seem to hit him. Rambo never had it so good. Heck, parodies of Rambo never had it so good. I couldn't help but think of Weird Al's hilarious spoof in UHF. That's pretty much the idea here.
In a subsequent scene the goons have him cornered in a warehouse full of guns, and to get away he fires his pistols in opposite directions while looking and running in a third, and of course the goons are both shot in the head. And then he has all these guns taped to posts that he's controlling with string and the rest of the goons just keep running into bullets. There's a quick second where he has to run to the next set of strings and the goons are following - two guys are literally within arms reach of Smith and firing their machine guns directly into his back at point-blank range and he is miraculously unharmed. The he escapes in a car and ends up crashing into a van full of goons, flying through both windshields and then neatly dispatching 6 more guys who don't even shoot back. I think his one-liner was something like, "Who says seat belts save lives?"
Smith then goes to meet with the senator, who it turns out is working with the gun manufacturers. So Smith kills the senator and jumps our of his plane and kills 20 more goons as he's plummeting to the ground.
Wait, it gets better. So Paul finally captures Smith and breaks some of his fingers and is about to cut his eye out and Smith headbutts Paul and then pushes the exacto knife through his own hand so he can whack goons in the face with it. The he sprays the gun king with blood squirting out of his hand and kills that guy, but he can't shoot straight with his broken hands so he can't kill Paul, who apparently would rather be shot at and taunt Smith than actually kill him. Paul's motivation for not killing Smith is that he has to be right about him because he knows people so well, so he's just wants Smith to confirm his ideas before he can kill him - typical stupid villain stuff.
So finally Paul is about to shoot Smith, who is sitting next to a fireplace with a roaring fire - we're not sure why, and then Smith reveals a handful of bullets, which he holds to the fire while aiming his hand at Paul, and of course the bullets fire out of his hand like a gun and Paul gets all shot up.
That's not even the end but I won't spoil it for you.
This movie takes comic violence to a new level, and I guess it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, except it's clearly not funny or even remotely clever. It's just stupid, with each action sequence more ridiculous than the last.
The movie is supposed to have an anti-gun message, but every single character, except for the baby, glorifies in the gun violence to such an extreme that it has the exact opposite effect. There's even an absurd line of dialog when Smith finds out the senator is working with the gun king; he says, "You know what I hate? Hypocrites." Except he's the biggest hypocrite of them all because supposedly despises the gun manufacturers while all he does in this movie is kill about 100 people with a gun. Giamatti has a similarly terrible line. "Guns don't kill people, but they help."
I get that that is supposed to be commentary on the pro-gun groups, and that the movie itself is some kind of statement about gun violence. But it's just so stupid and unbelievable in it's action sequences and characterizations that it comes off as a piece of Hollywood slop. It also suffers from the uniquely liberal trait of being unable to be a self-parody, because it tries to be serious even through the cartoon violence.
Somehow the Rotten Tomatoes crowd gave this thing good marks, but in the sort of self-loathing way that they also like Zombieland, the difference being that Zombieland knows what it is all about and Shoot 'Em Up clearly does not.
Clive Owen has made a few of these movies the past few years where his character is involved in some liberal silliness to fight evil corporations and whatnot, so I'm not surprised he took this role, even though this is clearly a B-movie. That he was passed over for the role of Bond is obviously a good thing. Paul Giamatti I can't figure. He has talent, and should not have relegated himself to the nonsense of this villain, more appropriate for a lesser-known actor not interested in a serious career. If not for John Adams, this role might have been the death knell in his own career.
Once again, Hollywood has made an absolute garbage movie that fails to either educate or entertain, and takes these absurd shots at conservative principles that miss the mark no less dramatically than the endless stream of extras who can't seem to kill the very unlikeable main character.
By the way, here are my bottom 5 most awful movies I've ever seen most of:
5. Tomb Raider
4. Joe Dirt
3. Freddie Got Fingered
2. Mannequin Too
1. Shoot 'Em Up
Yep, this one was that bad!
I was suffering a bit of insomnia last night and flipped to HBO after the ESPN bonus coverage of the MNF Packer-Viking game. The movie in progress was Shoot 'Em Up, an action movie that aspired to the slick stylings of the latest James Bond films, and with similar star power; Clive Owen played the dashing but dour, square-jawed hero to Paul Giamatti's archetypal one-dimensional completely evil villain.
The plot of the movie, if you can call it that, is that the hero, Smith, is trying to uncover some conspiracy that has something to do with infant bone marrow and a Democrat senator who is the front runner for the presidency because of his anti-gun stance. He's also a cripple and needs the marrow, so he's icky because he's breeding babies for the sole purpose of harvesting the marrow to treat himself. Unfortunately for the senator the major gun manufacturer has caught on and kills all the babies, except one, which has been saved by Smith.
The gun king has employed Paul Giamatti to find and kill the last baby to cover their tracks, so Paul, who just knows people, which is how it's explained that he is able to find Smith so easily, hires about 50 goons with automatic weapons to storm Smith's abandoned warehouse safehouse.
Unfortunately for Smith, he wasn't able to afford all the guns he wanted, so he gets a single box of shells for his pistol.
Now, there's also a woman in the film who's sole purpose is to breastfeed this baby Smith is trying to keep safe, but she's clearly a romantic interest if only Smith wasn't so disturbed.
I probably missed the part at the beginning of the movie where the story explains how Smith is so good at killing things, but it doesn't really matter. We do know that he has really good vision because he eats lots of carrots.
Once the goons start assaulting the warehouse, Smith kills nearly all of them. At first, because he has to conserve ammo, he kills about 10 guys with a single shot at each, all the while he's running directly at them and carrying the baby in his left arm. That's right - he's carrying the baby the whole time. Miraculously, none of the goons can hit him with their automatic weapons from 10 feet away, even as he has to rush them and wait for the perfect shot to conserve ammo. At the end of this scene he manages to pick up one of the sub-machine guns off a dead goon, jump out to a zip wire extending from the ceiling into the large, open square stairwell, and while he's spinning around and zipping down the line, he's shooting the goons on the stairwell, all while cradling the baby. He kills dozens of guys on his 10 second descent to the floor, all the while every one of them is shooting back, but they just can't seem to hit him. Rambo never had it so good. Heck, parodies of Rambo never had it so good. I couldn't help but think of Weird Al's hilarious spoof in UHF. That's pretty much the idea here.
In a subsequent scene the goons have him cornered in a warehouse full of guns, and to get away he fires his pistols in opposite directions while looking and running in a third, and of course the goons are both shot in the head. And then he has all these guns taped to posts that he's controlling with string and the rest of the goons just keep running into bullets. There's a quick second where he has to run to the next set of strings and the goons are following - two guys are literally within arms reach of Smith and firing their machine guns directly into his back at point-blank range and he is miraculously unharmed. The he escapes in a car and ends up crashing into a van full of goons, flying through both windshields and then neatly dispatching 6 more guys who don't even shoot back. I think his one-liner was something like, "Who says seat belts save lives?"
Smith then goes to meet with the senator, who it turns out is working with the gun manufacturers. So Smith kills the senator and jumps our of his plane and kills 20 more goons as he's plummeting to the ground.
Wait, it gets better. So Paul finally captures Smith and breaks some of his fingers and is about to cut his eye out and Smith headbutts Paul and then pushes the exacto knife through his own hand so he can whack goons in the face with it. The he sprays the gun king with blood squirting out of his hand and kills that guy, but he can't shoot straight with his broken hands so he can't kill Paul, who apparently would rather be shot at and taunt Smith than actually kill him. Paul's motivation for not killing Smith is that he has to be right about him because he knows people so well, so he's just wants Smith to confirm his ideas before he can kill him - typical stupid villain stuff.
So finally Paul is about to shoot Smith, who is sitting next to a fireplace with a roaring fire - we're not sure why, and then Smith reveals a handful of bullets, which he holds to the fire while aiming his hand at Paul, and of course the bullets fire out of his hand like a gun and Paul gets all shot up.
That's not even the end but I won't spoil it for you.
This movie takes comic violence to a new level, and I guess it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, except it's clearly not funny or even remotely clever. It's just stupid, with each action sequence more ridiculous than the last.
The movie is supposed to have an anti-gun message, but every single character, except for the baby, glorifies in the gun violence to such an extreme that it has the exact opposite effect. There's even an absurd line of dialog when Smith finds out the senator is working with the gun king; he says, "You know what I hate? Hypocrites." Except he's the biggest hypocrite of them all because supposedly despises the gun manufacturers while all he does in this movie is kill about 100 people with a gun. Giamatti has a similarly terrible line. "Guns don't kill people, but they help."
I get that that is supposed to be commentary on the pro-gun groups, and that the movie itself is some kind of statement about gun violence. But it's just so stupid and unbelievable in it's action sequences and characterizations that it comes off as a piece of Hollywood slop. It also suffers from the uniquely liberal trait of being unable to be a self-parody, because it tries to be serious even through the cartoon violence.
Somehow the Rotten Tomatoes crowd gave this thing good marks, but in the sort of self-loathing way that they also like Zombieland, the difference being that Zombieland knows what it is all about and Shoot 'Em Up clearly does not.
Clive Owen has made a few of these movies the past few years where his character is involved in some liberal silliness to fight evil corporations and whatnot, so I'm not surprised he took this role, even though this is clearly a B-movie. That he was passed over for the role of Bond is obviously a good thing. Paul Giamatti I can't figure. He has talent, and should not have relegated himself to the nonsense of this villain, more appropriate for a lesser-known actor not interested in a serious career. If not for John Adams, this role might have been the death knell in his own career.
Once again, Hollywood has made an absolute garbage movie that fails to either educate or entertain, and takes these absurd shots at conservative principles that miss the mark no less dramatically than the endless stream of extras who can't seem to kill the very unlikeable main character.
By the way, here are my bottom 5 most awful movies I've ever seen most of:
5. Tomb Raider
4. Joe Dirt
3. Freddie Got Fingered
2. Mannequin Too
1. Shoot 'Em Up
Yep, this one was that bad!
Friday, October 2, 2009
Rio in 2016 - What Happened?
Perhaps more shocking than Chicago not winning the 2016 Olympics is the fact it lost in the first round of voting, behind even Tokyo, which was not given a serious chance. Rio might have been the front-runner all along, especially after the IOC report of Chicago's preparedness to host the games came back ugly.
Still, the 3 most important people in America, and therefore the world, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle and Barack Obama, all went to Copenhagen to pitch the games. Failure should have been impossible.
I mentioned in a blog a month ago about Bama's popularity overseas, specifically in Europe. He's far more popular there than here, and yet he failed to woo the IOC voters.
In fact, it appears he managed to turn a tight contest between Chicago and Rio into a last place finish behind Tokyo, considered a non-factor in the results.
Is it possible the Obama's managed to turn people off? If you read Michelle's comments from yesterday, you could certainly cross that bridge. "It's a sacrifice," she said of her time committed to elegant parties and schmoozing foreign dignitaries. Uh-huh, she's that self-important.
And Bama's ego is only slightly smaller than the sum total of everything else in the entire universe. How could the congenial world body stand to listen to the smug SOB? Especially after that ridiculous speech he gave last week at the United Nations where he basically told the world, I saved America, but the rest of you poor bastards are on your own. And then he flew in just for the day, and all the pundits were convinced that just his presence would be enough to land the games for the USA. Could it be the committee thought his manuever one of supreme arrogance, that one man is so important that voters would throw out all the work put in by other nations just at the sight of him?
That's Bara's MO, of course. He is the chosen one, after all, he shouldn't have to work for it, it should just magically happen when he thinks of it. Just like everything else he's thought about doing this year and not done any real work to accomplish except to blame others for his failures.
I can't really blame the committee for voting as they did - Rio deserved it. Also, Chicago may have dodged a bullet; Olympic games are notoriously over-budget and never come close to breaking even, and it's not like the residents of the city would be thrilled about having it torn up for the next 6 years. The IOC probably saved U.S. taxpayers from the inevitable Chicago Olympic Games Federal Bailout.
Personally, I'm disappointed. I live in Wisconsin and would have liked to have gone to some of the events. Thanks for nothing, Barack. Your jackassedness has screwed America again.
Still, the 3 most important people in America, and therefore the world, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle and Barack Obama, all went to Copenhagen to pitch the games. Failure should have been impossible.
I mentioned in a blog a month ago about Bama's popularity overseas, specifically in Europe. He's far more popular there than here, and yet he failed to woo the IOC voters.
In fact, it appears he managed to turn a tight contest between Chicago and Rio into a last place finish behind Tokyo, considered a non-factor in the results.
Is it possible the Obama's managed to turn people off? If you read Michelle's comments from yesterday, you could certainly cross that bridge. "It's a sacrifice," she said of her time committed to elegant parties and schmoozing foreign dignitaries. Uh-huh, she's that self-important.
And Bama's ego is only slightly smaller than the sum total of everything else in the entire universe. How could the congenial world body stand to listen to the smug SOB? Especially after that ridiculous speech he gave last week at the United Nations where he basically told the world, I saved America, but the rest of you poor bastards are on your own. And then he flew in just for the day, and all the pundits were convinced that just his presence would be enough to land the games for the USA. Could it be the committee thought his manuever one of supreme arrogance, that one man is so important that voters would throw out all the work put in by other nations just at the sight of him?
That's Bara's MO, of course. He is the chosen one, after all, he shouldn't have to work for it, it should just magically happen when he thinks of it. Just like everything else he's thought about doing this year and not done any real work to accomplish except to blame others for his failures.
I can't really blame the committee for voting as they did - Rio deserved it. Also, Chicago may have dodged a bullet; Olympic games are notoriously over-budget and never come close to breaking even, and it's not like the residents of the city would be thrilled about having it torn up for the next 6 years. The IOC probably saved U.S. taxpayers from the inevitable Chicago Olympic Games Federal Bailout.
Personally, I'm disappointed. I live in Wisconsin and would have liked to have gone to some of the events. Thanks for nothing, Barack. Your jackassedness has screwed America again.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Recession? We Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!
In 2004, the estimated future liability for all financial guarantees to U.S. citizens by all levels of government was - get ready for this - 53 TRILLION DOLLARS. That's not a typo, and it's not a joke. The liability is also totally unfunded - the money necessary to pay for it does not yet exist.
When all benefits for Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and the Prescription Drug Benefit, and all government funded pensions, are added together and projected for all citizens who are currently alive, the staggering amount of liability equals almost 4 times the entire US GDP.
In fact, the current liability is more than the total value of all goods and services created for the entire world!! So if every living person devoted an entire year's work to nothing but paying toward the United States' financial promises to its own people, we would still be short on the bill.
That's astonishing. But that's not all. The $53 (now $57) Trillion represents the value in today's dollars, not future dollars, which is how it will be paid out. The true cost of this liability is closer to $100 TRILLION when adjusted for the future value of the dollar over the term of payout.
Ok, the good news is that the Senate has just discovered $65 million in waste and fraud in the Medicare system, so let's see, that only leaves about $100 TRILLION!!!
You'll remember that George Bush tried to tackle part of the problem in 2005 when he proposed to overhaul Social Security, but no, we couldn't have that! Even though there was no risk to current beneficiaries, the Democrats waged a national campaign, complete with misinformation and fear-mongering among the elderly to defeat it. Sound familiar?
Here's the insidious part: All these programs, with the exception of Social Security, were created by the very people who stand to benefit from them, namely the so-called "Greatest Generation", a self-administered title, and their corrupt, entitlement-brained baby-boomer kids. These two generations absolutely lined their nest own eggs in gold at the expense of every other American who will ever live. Think about that - the people who paid in the least have the most to gain, and the looming insolvency of the whole shitpiece assures that future generations will either get nothing or see their own tax burdens doubled or tripled to pay for it. Either way we lose out, to the tune of more than a million dollars of lost income during our lifetimes.
What could you do with million dollars? Probably a lot, unless you're the government, in which case you sneeze it away. Think of it like this - how often do you count or keep track of pennies anymore? Never. Well, a million dollars is a like a penny to a US Senator or the president. It's meaningless, and that's how they treat it. 65 cents will buy me a can of Coke, and the Medicare fraud is like a can of Coke to the government - it takes about 5 minutes and it's gone.
Time to predict the future:
1. This will start to come to a head during 2012, Bara Bama's reelection year. If he manages to con the nation into believeing he has the best solution, all taxes on every working American will be doubled during his second term.
2. If a competent conservative is elected to the White House, along with a conservative congress, we still only have a puncher's chance at turning things around since all the clout will reside within the age groups that stand to get the benefits. The best we can hope for is a hard age cap on all government benefits that will limit the inevitable tax hikes. For example, if the cap is placed at anyone currently 50 years or older. That means the rest of us get stuck with the bill and get nothing, but at least the country as a whole still has a future.
3. Due to the current Democrat regime, out of control spending and debt issuance causes foreign lenders to balk kat future American debt risk. The US government can no longer print money without inflationary affects and the dollar crashes. Either the government immediately raises all taxes to cover the continued deficit spending and benefit payouts, which will almost certainly cause the economy to collapse, or all benefits are immediately cancelled. The government can do this simply by enacting new law.
I think the last option, as catastrophic as that may seem to the "Greatest" degeneration and the Boomer Babies, is actually the best possible outcome. It will take an economic crisis unprecedented in US history and not seen since Germany after Versailles to make it happen, and then only if we have courageous enough leadership to make it happen.
There's one more possibility, of course. That's when policitans do nothing, the economy collapses, and a liberal government federalizes all the nation's assets. It's not so far-fetched. FDR tried it in 1933 and to some extent succeeded, but the Great Depression will seem like a misplaced credit card bill compared to the inevitable chaos when the big bill comes due. Then it's Welcome to Communism!
When all benefits for Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and the Prescription Drug Benefit, and all government funded pensions, are added together and projected for all citizens who are currently alive, the staggering amount of liability equals almost 4 times the entire US GDP.
In fact, the current liability is more than the total value of all goods and services created for the entire world!! So if every living person devoted an entire year's work to nothing but paying toward the United States' financial promises to its own people, we would still be short on the bill.
That's astonishing. But that's not all. The $53 (now $57) Trillion represents the value in today's dollars, not future dollars, which is how it will be paid out. The true cost of this liability is closer to $100 TRILLION when adjusted for the future value of the dollar over the term of payout.
Ok, the good news is that the Senate has just discovered $65 million in waste and fraud in the Medicare system, so let's see, that only leaves about $100 TRILLION!!!
You'll remember that George Bush tried to tackle part of the problem in 2005 when he proposed to overhaul Social Security, but no, we couldn't have that! Even though there was no risk to current beneficiaries, the Democrats waged a national campaign, complete with misinformation and fear-mongering among the elderly to defeat it. Sound familiar?
Here's the insidious part: All these programs, with the exception of Social Security, were created by the very people who stand to benefit from them, namely the so-called "Greatest Generation", a self-administered title, and their corrupt, entitlement-brained baby-boomer kids. These two generations absolutely lined their nest own eggs in gold at the expense of every other American who will ever live. Think about that - the people who paid in the least have the most to gain, and the looming insolvency of the whole shitpiece assures that future generations will either get nothing or see their own tax burdens doubled or tripled to pay for it. Either way we lose out, to the tune of more than a million dollars of lost income during our lifetimes.
What could you do with million dollars? Probably a lot, unless you're the government, in which case you sneeze it away. Think of it like this - how often do you count or keep track of pennies anymore? Never. Well, a million dollars is a like a penny to a US Senator or the president. It's meaningless, and that's how they treat it. 65 cents will buy me a can of Coke, and the Medicare fraud is like a can of Coke to the government - it takes about 5 minutes and it's gone.
Time to predict the future:
1. This will start to come to a head during 2012, Bara Bama's reelection year. If he manages to con the nation into believeing he has the best solution, all taxes on every working American will be doubled during his second term.
2. If a competent conservative is elected to the White House, along with a conservative congress, we still only have a puncher's chance at turning things around since all the clout will reside within the age groups that stand to get the benefits. The best we can hope for is a hard age cap on all government benefits that will limit the inevitable tax hikes. For example, if the cap is placed at anyone currently 50 years or older. That means the rest of us get stuck with the bill and get nothing, but at least the country as a whole still has a future.
3. Due to the current Democrat regime, out of control spending and debt issuance causes foreign lenders to balk kat future American debt risk. The US government can no longer print money without inflationary affects and the dollar crashes. Either the government immediately raises all taxes to cover the continued deficit spending and benefit payouts, which will almost certainly cause the economy to collapse, or all benefits are immediately cancelled. The government can do this simply by enacting new law.
I think the last option, as catastrophic as that may seem to the "Greatest" degeneration and the Boomer Babies, is actually the best possible outcome. It will take an economic crisis unprecedented in US history and not seen since Germany after Versailles to make it happen, and then only if we have courageous enough leadership to make it happen.
There's one more possibility, of course. That's when policitans do nothing, the economy collapses, and a liberal government federalizes all the nation's assets. It's not so far-fetched. FDR tried it in 1933 and to some extent succeeded, but the Great Depression will seem like a misplaced credit card bill compared to the inevitable chaos when the big bill comes due. Then it's Welcome to Communism!
Paying Debt With More Debt
Money is so cheap right now that many states are borrowing to pay off old debt. From a fiscal perspective this makes total sense; you exchange debt at a high interest rate for debt at a low interest rate.
The problem is rates cannot go any lower, so at this point the states are naturally going to load up on cheap money knowing it will be more expensive later. So states are taking on even more debt simply because of the rate - any sense of fiscal discipline is out the window. The low rate encourages states to spend to the limits of liberal imaginations, and that is not a good thing.
We're going to see states so heavily leveraged, with dubious likelihood of paying the borrowed money back. This is the perfect opportunity to cut costs, but that will never happen with fiscal liberals (Democrats or Republicans) in power.
I don't see how these states can remain solvent 5, 10, or 15 years from now given current projections for revenues vs expenditures.
Unless of course the states' budgets are federalized...
The problem is rates cannot go any lower, so at this point the states are naturally going to load up on cheap money knowing it will be more expensive later. So states are taking on even more debt simply because of the rate - any sense of fiscal discipline is out the window. The low rate encourages states to spend to the limits of liberal imaginations, and that is not a good thing.
We're going to see states so heavily leveraged, with dubious likelihood of paying the borrowed money back. This is the perfect opportunity to cut costs, but that will never happen with fiscal liberals (Democrats or Republicans) in power.
I don't see how these states can remain solvent 5, 10, or 15 years from now given current projections for revenues vs expenditures.
Unless of course the states' budgets are federalized...
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
All This Phony "Debate"
The health care reform movement is trying out a new tactic this week. They are framing the "debate" as being between liberal, err, progressive Democrats who want a public option, and so-called "conservative" Democrats who, while they aren't opposed to the idea, know the public support is not with their more liberal colleagues, so they oppose the public option. (Anyone wanna guess where the polling is tracking in those "conservative" senator's states?)
I'm not shocked that the media is touting this as some great battle for pragmatism, but I am surprised at how many in the conservative camp have bought into it.
Hey out there, wake up! This is a phony scam to make the American people think that Democrats are everything to everyone! Have you even heard the term "Republicans" mentioned in the context of this new ploy? Of course not, because the press is in on it.
And it makes total sense. By apparently positioning one group of Democrats to the right, they confuse people into believing that group is conservative, when the opposite is in fact true. The second big win is that the now "Conservative" element of the Democrat party opposes only the contentious public option, but not the greater albatross of ObamaCare as a whole. The hoped-for effect is to make the American people think that even conservatives are now on board with the plan to overhaul the health care system, including public funding for self-assisted suicide, abortion, and illegals. And finally, it allows the ever-expanding progressive wing of the Democrat party to move even farther to the extreme left, where they wanted to go for so long but only now is it politically tenable.
This is a clever ruse, and it may work, based on the sleepy response from actual conservatives and the zero media coverage for Republican opposition. But hey, we don't need Republicans anymore - the left has everyone covered!
I'm not shocked that the media is touting this as some great battle for pragmatism, but I am surprised at how many in the conservative camp have bought into it.
Hey out there, wake up! This is a phony scam to make the American people think that Democrats are everything to everyone! Have you even heard the term "Republicans" mentioned in the context of this new ploy? Of course not, because the press is in on it.
And it makes total sense. By apparently positioning one group of Democrats to the right, they confuse people into believing that group is conservative, when the opposite is in fact true. The second big win is that the now "Conservative" element of the Democrat party opposes only the contentious public option, but not the greater albatross of ObamaCare as a whole. The hoped-for effect is to make the American people think that even conservatives are now on board with the plan to overhaul the health care system, including public funding for self-assisted suicide, abortion, and illegals. And finally, it allows the ever-expanding progressive wing of the Democrat party to move even farther to the extreme left, where they wanted to go for so long but only now is it politically tenable.
This is a clever ruse, and it may work, based on the sleepy response from actual conservatives and the zero media coverage for Republican opposition. But hey, we don't need Republicans anymore - the left has everyone covered!
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