Nancy Pelosi Hears Voices

There is no other explanation for this.


That was the longest 5:06 of my life.


(h/t DrudgeReport)

Too Good to Check - Nancy Pelosi to Quit?

Please please please please please please please please please please please let it be true.

OWS Rampage in San Francisco - The Video

How lovely. Here's a video, posted by the perpetrators themselves, of the destruction they wreaked in San Fransisco on April 30.

These are the same people Nancy Pelosi just adores.

I can't wait until the business owners start suing the city for failure to enforce the law.

Obama Threatens Social Security Checks if Budget Deal Not Reached

Wow. I mean, just, wow.

Remember that ad that Democrats ran a few weeks back accusing Paul Ryan (through his budget plan) of pushing Granny off a cliff in her wheelchair?

This one?


How prescient. Except for one thing: it’s not Ryan who wants to push Granny off the cliff, it’s President Obama. He said yesterday that he couldn’t guarantee that the August Social Security checks could be mailed out if Congressional Republicans didn’t give him the massive tax increases he is demanding.

So, who wants to remake that ad now?

This is beyond the pale. Obama has pulled back the curtain on his true nature, that being a Chicago henchman who’s willing to hurt anyone, and I mean anyone, to get his way. Do I need to explain just how despicable this is to anyone?

You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. President.

As I’ve covered earlier, should a debt deal not be reached, we would not default. In that case, the Constitution requires that foreign debt be paid first, with the remaining funds to be allocated by the Treasury Department. But, the demagogues on the left would have us believe that the world would end in a just a few hours, and it would all be the fault of the Republicans in Congress.

Don’t be fooled.

Mark Levin lays out the situation well. Take a listen to better understand just what it is that Obama’s doing with regard to our debt crisis. (h/t The Right Scoop)

American Thinker blog also has a good post on the debt. Worth a read to get up to speed, too.

Naturally, if you receive Social Security, this sent a chill up your spine. It was designed to do that, and by inference, indict John Boehner, Ryan, Mitch McConnell and anyone else who dares to resist Obama’s efforts to bankrupt our nation and to make them look like the bad guys in this situation.

However, it won’t work. It can’t work.

Obama just insured his defeat in the 2012 presidential election. What? Somebody had to say it. Do you honestly think that Obama won’t be blamed for his decision to stop those checks?

This is the thing that Obama owns now. No one else brought it up. It would be within his power to tell Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner how to prioritize the payments. If he feels that Social Security recipients shouldn’t get their checks, but that the EPA, the NEA, Planned Parenthood and PBS keep their offices open, there is no one else to blame.

And believe me, there would be political hell to pay if he does, both for him and the corrupt Progressives in Washington that got us into this mess through their irresponsible spending spree that began in 2007 with Nancy Pelosi’s takeover of the House.

Good.

Many seniors I know, since they’re retired, follow politics. It’s a fun hobby (in a masochistic way, to be sure) and it keeps their intellectual muscles toned. And I’m certain that once word of this reprehensible possibility gets around, Obama’s image will suffer a huge downward spike, as it should.

So long, Barry.

While others in the blogosphere aren’t quite as optimistic as I am about the negative political fallout from Obama’ statement yesterday, there are still quite a few who can see through this blatant effort by Obama to scare seniors. Here’s a roundup.

Michelle Malkin, Obama: If We Don’t Get a Deal, I Can’t Guarantee We’ll Be Sending Out Social Security Checks on August 3rd.

NewsMax, Obama Threatens August Social Security Checks in Debt Ceiling Gamble.

The Wall Street Journal Online, Raise Taxes or Granny Gets It.

NiceDeb, Debt Ceiling News Round-Up: “In The End, All This Is About Who Gets The Blame”

And over at Ace of Spades HQ, you think I’m bad about peeing in your economic Wheaties on Mondays, Monty brings the DOOM! every morning, complete with kitteh.

I guess this stuff is finally getting serious.

The 112th Congress is the Least Productive in Years – Thank Goodness!

Kathleen Hennessey, reporterette for the LA Times, penned this little piece over the weekend. She thinks that Congress is falling down on the job by not being “productive.”

She actually tries to makes it sound like a bad thing…

The 112th Congress is on pace to be one of the least productive in recent memory — as measured by votes taken, bills made into laws, nominees approved. By most of those metrics, this crowd is underperforming even the "do-nothing Congress" of 1948, as Harry Truman dubbed it. The hot-temper era of Clinton impeachment in the 1990s saw more bills become law.

She goes on to say this –

Experts cite the rise of a brand of conservatism that aims for a government that governs least.

Um, Katy, that’s not “a brand of conservatism,” that is conservatism in its purest form.

It’s clear from her article that Hennessey, like many others, doesn’t understand the very simple founding principle of our government: we are free unless there is a law that specifically prevents a certain action. This is what our current Commander-in-Chief meant when he called our Constitution a document of “negative liberties.”

From the American Thinker link,

…Government does some things which reduce our private rights and yet which increase the common good. Politics is all about where the boundary between broad notions of promoting the general welfare by state coercion and preserving liberty should be. Politicians on the Left have often argued that liberty should be reined in more tightly so that "the people" can live better. But implying that more state power somehow increases liberty is beyond mere Leftism. It is entry into that dead realm of [Orwellian] Newspeak in which language is pureed into nonsense, and then nonsense is presented as argument.

Now this may not seem very important on the surface, but it’s the main reason why we’re staggering under the weight of unprecedented intrusion into our daily lives from the federal government. Soon, we won’t be able to purchase 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. Traditional propellants used in aerosol cans have been outlawed, forcing much more expensive alternatives to be used. Asthma inhalers have more than doubled in price as a result, making formerly affordable relief difficult or even impossible for many. Gasoline is now blended with ethanol, which is less efficient and results in poorer gas mileage and damage to older fuel systems, again the product of legislation from Capitol Hill. Additionally, the seasonal formulations required for gas adds to the price we pay at the pump.

There are many more examples, but the trend is alarmingly clear: we are allowing those we send to Washington to legislate our freedom away at a frightening pace. Much of the reason for the increased price of consumer goods today is the direct result of misguided laws enacted by zealous representatives in Washington who think they are doing the people’s will by enacting as many laws as possible.

This is the primary reason why Obama and the Left received such a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm elections. It signaled an awakening of we the people to the dangers of a far-too-large federal government and the desire to stop the rampant trampling of our freedom by Progressives in Congress.

So, what the Left sees as a failure, conservatives rightly see as a victory. Slowing the rate at which we’re losing our freedom should be cause for celebration, not derision.

Hennessey’s article reveals quite a bit about the Leftist mindset, that government should be the sole dispenser of the rights of a people in direct contradiction to the intent of our Founders, namely that our freedom is inherent in our existence, given from God at birth, intended to be preserved by representatives who refrain from enacting laws which, under our form of government, rob us of that freedom.

This is the revolution that our forebears fought and died for. A new way of living, a first for mankind, beginning with the idea that man was naturally free, that freedom was no longer the benevolent allowance of an all-powerful monarch, to be dispensed as a reward for fealty to the king.

In other words, less is indeed more when it comes to our form of government. Less laws equal more freedom.

$1 Gasoline and Mental Conditioning

Glenn Beck is concerned about an incident that happened recently in California.



While he has a valid point, I think he’s missing something. This incident is actually less about honesty and more about mental conditioning, or classical conditioning, as it’s known in psychological circles.

This is an very touchy subject, understandably so. Most folks believe they’re in full control of themselves and will reject any idea to the contrary outright. I get that. But at the same time, that idea is the foundation for every form of advertising we have today.

The whole point of advertising is to make you buy a product or a service. Think for a moment of the various ways that advertising is used to make you feel a certain way about a product. Peer pressure, status, a diminished sense of worth if you don’t own a product, all these and more are used to manipulate you into buying something that you might not need or be able to afford.

How many times have you purchased something only to regret it later? If this has ever happened to you, then you are well aware of the power of advertising.

I don’t mean to criticize all advertising. There are many good products out there that serve a useful purpose and are very handy to own, saving you time and trouble.

As a guy, I’m contractually obligated to say that tools fall under that category. Not all advertising is bad. If it serves to inform you of the tangible benefit of a product, that’s a good thing. You save time to spend with your family, the producers of that product (your neighbors) make money, what’s not to like?

Back to Beck. He’s concerned that no one thanked anyone at the gas station or even mentioned it to them. He’s also concerned that the station’s owner lost some $21,000 in the span of a few hours. He’s concerned that we’ve lost something as a nation.

I don’t mean to diminish his concerns at all. They’re all valid, but they’re more symptoms of a larger problem in America today: we’re being told what to think. And quite a few of us seem willing to be told what to think.

All seven of my regular readers have heard me mention something called “healthy skepticism.” It’s merely a variation on that old saying that “you should only believe half of what you hear and none of what you read.” In my case, that came with age. With others, it’s inborn or taught to them by their similarly skeptical parents. However you arrive at this quality, be glad you have it. I sure am.

It’s a natural defense mechanism and one that used to be in abundance here in America. Missouri is the “Show Me” state for a reason. That implies that the good residents of that state need to be shown how or why anything is true before they’ll believe it. Those are words to live by.

But, bombarded as we are today with electronic messaging, we literally can’t see the forest for the trees, to coin a phrase. Even seemingly innocuous actions like clicking the “Like” button for a Facebook recommendation sends that information to a whole slew of advertising companies. It’s nothing new by any means. Google, the host of this blog, tracks your search results to pass along to advertisers. You know that happens every time you log on.

But what about when advertising strategies get used in politics? Former White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod is famous as the “Father of Astroturfing.” While you may have heard that term before, you might not know what it means. You also might not know that it’s specifically prohibited by the code of ethics of the Public Relations Society of America, according to this Wikipedia entry.

“Astroturfing is a form of propaganda whose techniques usually consist of a few people attempting to give the impression that mass numbers of enthusiasts advocate some specific cause. In the UK this technique is better known as "rent-a-crowd" after the successful "rent-a-crate" business.”

Hmm, that sure sounds familiar. Now, where have I heard that idea before? Oh, yeah, Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

“Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.”

Propaganda, plain and simple. Or the use of advertising techniques and psychology to make you think a certain way. They’re the same thing.

More comprehensive is the description by Richard Alan Nelson: "Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion.

So, now to why I think Glenn Beck missed the point in his report. We’ve been conditioned to hate oil companies, and the incident he points to is a natural result of that conditioning. If you’re taught to hate something or someone, the natural response is retribution, and this was a classic example of the public exacting it from a perceived enemy.

Think for a moment of how many times you’ve heard the phrase “Big Oil” in a derogatory manner. Nancy Pelosi is famous for it.



She’s not alone. Turn on almost any news channel and you’ll hear the same type of derogatory attitude displayed towards oil companies and big business in general. Years of this type of message will tend to make you think that it’s true. After all, as Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Vladimir Lenin both observed, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth, and the bigger the lie, the more it tends to be believed.

This is why you can’t have a discussion about the details of politics with a committed leftist. These conversations nearly always devolve into emotional shouting matches and name-calling.

This is also what led to the election of Barack Obama. Eight years of the constant drumbeat against George Bush and Republicans resulted in 52% of the public electing Anyone Who Wasn’t Bush, a role that Obama happily stepped into.

To wrap up, Glenn Beck wasn’t wrong in his criticism of that gas station incident, he just missed the bigger point by thismuch.

Conditioning works.

Against you.

My God, it’s Full of Waivers

Remember this statement by former progressive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi?



Well, here we are a year or so later and we’re finding out what’s in it. As we conservatives suspected, it contains many things, all of them bad.

In the era immediately preceding the passage of the government takeover of one-sixth of our economy, we knew we had a problem; health care costs were rising at a rapid rate. This came as a surprise to absolutely no one.

If you’re a Baby Boomer, you know it. You’ve been reminded of it ever since you were small. You’ve been analyzed and demographed since before you were born, and subjected to every form and nuance of advertising known to man. Certain folk who are Paid to Know Things probably know more about you than you do.

We were young and hip before being young and hip was cool. We were rebellious and raucous. We wanted Free Love and freedom from The Man. Our heroes were transmogrified from real life people who did real heroic-type things in real life to celluloid anti-heroes with some dark angst simmering underneath, ala James Dean.

“Do what you feel” became our mantra. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers proudly trucked their way across the pages of Rolling Stone Magazine, where the classified ads largely consisted of people who were trying to get one million other people to send them just one dollar. The Woodstock Nation was a unified block of free-spirited individuals who chose to separate themselves from the stodginess of their parents’ straight world and do their own thing by dressing, speaking, and acting alike.

We were oh so different from out parents except for one teeny, tiny little thing: we got old. And there were a lot of us that did that at the same time. Now, we’re starting to retire in record numbers, just as we did everything else in record numbers. And somehow, the government entitlements that were put in place before us, that we were told would always be there for us, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, weren’t prepared for us. It’s almost like there were no Boomers elected to office anywhere.

How could anyone not have anticipated that health care costs would rise in proportion to the population of said Boomers? Did someone repeal the law of supply and demand and did I miss the memo?

This national event (the retirement of vast numbers of Baby Boomers) gave certain politicians of the far-left, control-freak variety a golden opportunity to implement one of their fondest desires – Universal Health Care. While that’s a noble sounding goal, that everyone should have access to quality health care for free, as soon as that idea becomes more than printed words on a page, it self-destructs like the tape at the beginning of Mission Impossible.

Ask someone from Britain or Canada how their government-sponsored and massively expensive health care system works and you’ll hear tales heretofore unheard of here in America. Long waits to see doctors, inefficient, sleepy-eyed, bureaucrats deciding who gets what treatment when and unnecessary deaths due to a myriad of conflagrations unique to a large and unmanageable government program, many times peopled by union members.

The fact that foreign dignitaries from these lands that boast of free health care for all come here to America for their treatment speaks volumes.

And the volumes say, “It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t work.”

But that little fact of political and medical life didn’t dissuade the progressives in Congress from rubbing their little paws together with glee upon the immaculation of Barack Obama. They knew the time was at hand to move forward with their Grand Plan to control the American people through their health.

Ignoring such national trivialities as a housing market meltdown and the rapidly rising unemployment rate, they gathered behind closed doors without their Republican counterparts to discuss their plans. In the dead of night and against the will of a clear majority of the country, ObamaCare became law.

Over two thousand pages of legalistic mumbo-jumbo that no one bothered to read was passed over the protestations of a nation. One progressive legislator after another was questioned about the bill. Not one of them could give a clear-cut answer. Deals were cut with representatives in smoke-filled rooms (we’re left to guess as to the origin of that smoke, since little in the bill makes sense, Baby Boomers and all that).

Fast-forward to today and we get a better picture of what’s in it.

Waivers. Lots of them. Distributed to many groups who supported the bill and have since discovered how much it costs them.

Over 1300 waivers to date, with more on the way. And lots of them in Nancy Pelosi’s district.

If you don’t see anything wrong with the issuance of waivers (read exemptions) for a new law in America, then it’s time to introduce you to something you may have heard about: The Constitution.

This mysterious document speaks in an ancient language about obscure ideas. One of these arcane notions is that a law applies to everyone equally. Amazingly, this apparently outdated concept even has a name – The Equal Protection Clause.

Just think of a law that everyone must follow. I laugh in its general direction.

It’s not the Chicago Way.

The Chicago Way of Politics is to pick and choose winners and losers based on your loyalty to those in power. Support me and I’ll grant you a favor. All you need do is kiss my ring, or my ass, either one will do. Cross me and I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.

Thank you, Godfather, for only cutting off one of my fingers. I’ll never speak ill of you, your family, your pets or your taste in fashion again.

Far be it from me to expect all the lawyers in Washington who write these laws to be familiar with the country’s legal foundational document, much less any restrictions that could be placed on them. They can certainly do as they please.



Nancy Pelosi’s word’s return, “We have to pass the bill so that you can, uh, find out what’s in it.”

To which Dave Bowman in 2001 replies, “The thing's hollow, it goes on forever, and, oh my God, it's full of waivers!"

Obama in the Economic Shadow of Carter

There’s a wonderfully optimistic post over at Politico today: President Obama dashes 'Jimmy Carter' label. It’s optimistic only if you’re a far-left, progressive Democrat. (h/t to Instapundit)

This article gleefully reports that Obama’s approval numbers show a 12-point uptick in his popularity in the wake of the successful bin Laden operation. Noticeably absent is any mention of George Bush, whose policies Obama continued and to whom Obama owes his singular political success.

The author is saying, essentially, that the 2012 presidential election has already been decided in Obama’s favor and that Republicans may as well start waving the white flag of surrender.

Not so fast there, Sunshine. The folks over at CNBC are showing only a three point overall bump from his pre-raid approval numbers. That’s notable because they’re not a stronghold of conservative thought.

As the euphoria of bin Laden’s demise slowly wears off, we’re returning to the reality of an American economy on life support. Last Friday’s new unemployment numbers are but one indicator that Happy Obama and his Merry Economy Wrecking Crew are still busy doing their best to strangle the private sector and drive our federal debt to unprecedented and unsustainable levels.

Perhaps they need a few reminders that we still have all the wonderfulness of Jimmy Carter II in the White House.

The nation’s unemployment numbers rose back up to nine percent. Understand that this number is somewhat misleading due to the way the numbers are obtained. Those who have been out of work the longest aren’t counted. If you aren’t actively collecting state unemployment money, you’re not considered unemployed. As people exhaust their benefits after two years, they are simply no longer counted.

Similarly, the price of groceries and gasoline isn’t figured into the inflation index. It’s almost as the prime drivers of unemployment and inflation aren’t counted. Hmm, wouldn’t that make the numbers appear to be better than they actually are?

Why yes, yes they would.

It’s funny how the progressive, anti-American left seizes onto just one victory by their little hero and it’s game over for the Republicans. Until that event, Obama was on the express elevator to the bottom of popularity as his policies (along with those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in the previous Congress, don't forget) chug along as planned. A drastic erosion of our standard of living will do that to a president.

Granted, taking out bin Laden was a feather in Obama’s cap. But how is that helping the growing number of Americans struggling to purchase gas, or groceries, or find a job? The answer is it can’t and it won’t. But you knew that already.

That doesn’t stop the wishful thinkers on the left from crowing from the barn roof that Obama is invincible and that all the GOP candidates should just go back home where they belong and let Obama work his magic for another four years.

Sorry, but we can’t take four more years of Obama. The first two have already been quite enough, thank you. How much longer can we continue our downward slide toward the gaping maw of the economic Sarlacc? How many more of your friends and family will lose their jobs? Their homes? Their self-sufficiency and sense of worth?

Almost everyone I know has lost either a job, or a home or both. Before you say I need a better circle of friends, understand that I know machinists, salesfolk, engineers, business owners, nurses, and degreed professionals of various backgrounds. They’re all hurting.

This economy and the policies that caused it are responsible for the greatest waste of intellectual capital this country has ever seen. Why should a degreed software engineer be forced to unload trucks for a living? That’s not me, BTW, but my situation is no different. The waste isn’t confined to one sector of the economy, it’s everywhere you look.

People want to work, preferably in their chosen field. In America, we once had that opportunity, but efforts to engineer our society have resulted in big policy decisions at the national level that have done little to expand our economy, still the world’s largest. I point to NAFTA as the beginning of these destructive policies, and they continue to this day.

Do you really think that Obama’s illegal moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf isn’t contributing to high gas prices? If you think that, then I don’t know what to say to you. Your grasp of economics is tenuous at best. Get thee to the Interwebs and start educating yourself on the wonderfully simple Law of Supply and Demand. In five minutes, you’ll know more than all the president’s current economic advisors combined.

But if you see the economic truth, then you also see that it’s not the free market that’s causing our malaise. It’s a direct result of policy stifling that market. Our economy is being engineered by people who don’t know what they’re doing, unless, of course, they’re intent upon ruining it.

We grew to become the world’s largest economy precisely because we were free. This is called “organic growth” and led us to the top of the world in economic growth, technical innovation, and prosperity. There was diversity in the job market, and even if you didn’t have a college degree, you could still make a respectable living with your hands.

But in the mid-nineties, someone somewhere in Washington decided that we, as a nation, were to move to a “service oriented” economy. This simple decision was the beginning of the end of our free market. Have you noticed how many economic bubbles have formed and burst since then?

Ask yourself why anyone would want to suppress a vibrant, free market for any reason other than to cripple it. Any effort or policy that deviates from the principle of freedom doesn’t improve a free market economy. That’s why it’s called what it’s called.

The current president looks with wonder upon this nation and its economy. Having no experience in the business world, and surrounding himself with like-minded people, he is captaining the Titanic, hereafter renamed the Jimmy Carter. Brave and bold, full of himself, enjoying the view from the bridge while heading straight towards the iceberg. Even when the ship strikes it, the captain isn’t worried because he’s been assured that he’s at the helm of the most advanced ship ever to ply the seas. After all, it’s unsinkable, isn’t it?

And that’s a best-case scenario giving the president the benefit of the doubt. All of the benefit.

In a worst-case scenario, our economic demise is being planned and guided by someone with a track record of destroying entire countries’ economies and America would be the trophy he’d most like to mount over the fireplace.

Not that I’m into conspiracy theories, but I keep asking myself, as do many, if Obama were purposely destroying our economy, what would he be doing differently?

This period of history makes Jimmy Carter look positively stellar by comparison. There isn’t one traditional economic indicator showing us emerging from a very deep recession. Obama’s policies are directly to blame. I don’t employ the double standard the Progressive Pravda uses that pins the blame only on Republican presidents when the economy heads south. Obama owns this economy. There are no two ways about it.

We’ve reached the tipping point. Our federal government has grown so big and influential (in a negative way) that it now controls our economy. New laws and regulations, regardless of their intentions, are having a downward pull on us that’s rapidly exceeding the force of gravity.

Knowing what the problem is will go a long way towards fixing it. The solution is simple, but not easy: we need a reduction in government away from central command and control. It’s been tried before and has failed every time.

What’s needed is a change in the national mindset. A smaller, weaker government should be demanded by the American people. And when I say weak, I don’t mean that in a militaristic way. I mean that in the way that we shouldn’t be struggling under counterproductive rules, red tape and high tax rates. Washington is simply too big, too powerful and economically damaging to continue upon its current path. We have to rein it in if we are to ever have a hope of being the country we could be, where each person has the opportunity to set his or her own course through life, secure in the knowledge that some bureaucrat somewhere far away isn’t busy concocting ways to justify his salary by making up rules as fast as possible, rules that restrict the creation of wealth and prosperity.

In other words, it’s time for some change, only this time, the positive kind.

“Hidden Tax” Forces Companies to Hire Fewer Americans

All right, everybody sing together, in C, a one and a two…

One of these things is caused by the other,

Both of these things just don’t belong.

(Apologies to Big Bird)

There are two seemingly unrelated stories on the economy today. One points out that large, multinational companies are hiring fewer Americans while hiring more foreign workers. The other highlights the staggering costs of regulatory compliance for American companies: nearly $2Trillion dollars.

I used the Sesame Street song for the benefit of the Obama administration, given the overall intellectual weight of their arguments when it comes to our economy.

To me, the fact that one of these is the result of the other is glaringly clear. So clear in fact, that I’m having a rough time trying to explain it. I could just as easily type “Well, DUH” and finish my post right there.

But since Washington is overrun with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, who is firmly convinced that the 111th Congress was doing good things by passing more legislation than any other congress in history, I feel the overwhelming need to explain this to them in small words and short sentences.

She was very, very proud of her accomplishments, as she herself says, “We’re very, very proud of the work that was done by this Congress,” the California Democrat said. “We came here to do a job and we got much of it done.”

Yeppers, if that job was to drag America down under the weight of new and costly laws. If that’s what you intended to do, Nan, then you have every right to feel proud. The rest of us, not so much.

Nancy, you don’t seem to understand how this works. If you realize that every new law that Congress passes reduces our freedom, then, in order to maintain and protect our freedom, you should be reluctant to pass laws. You plainly don’t realize that simple truth. We are free unless and until a law is passed that specifically prohibits a certain action. That’s the foundation that our Founders based our government upon; one simple principle that was once considered popular knowledge for anyone entering politics.

It was standard operating procedure in Washington for a while. Those in power used it sparingly and with great caution. They understood that a small and weak domestic government was essential for the freedom of the people. They operated from the premise that they would not interfere with the daily lives of Americans who were perfectly capable of carrying on their affairs in a mature manner, particularly when it came to business.

But something happened along the way, and this simple, unsaid principle was discarded by unprincipled people who wanted to become career politicians. As surely as a moth is drawn to a flame, American politics gradually started to attract the power-hungry. Such is the attraction, as Plato noted, "Those who seek power are not worthy of that power."

Why? "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

So, in the act of seeking power comes the recognition of the lack of moral and intellectual principles of the power-seeker. Hence the need to be very cautious in choosing our “leaders.”

But I digress.

The previous Congress pursued their agenda with great zeal. There was a 19% increase in proposed rules between 2009 and 2010. And while “only” 217 bills were passed, those laws mushroom into thousands of new rules and regulations that have the power of law. In many instances, these regulations force changes upon the procedures that businesses use daily, costing money to comply with them. If you’re in business, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know.

So it should come as no surprise that increased rules and regulations stifle businesses and the creation of wealth. We have entered regulatory lands that our predecessors once feared to tread, and we are paying the price. If we continue down this path of increasing federal intervention, then our new normal will indeed be one of high unemployment, increasing debt, and a national malaise that can only be remedied by a thorough cleansing of the left-wing incumbents in Washington who think their sole purpose in life is to create more government.

We’ve reached the tipping point: as our government grows in size, complexity, cost and intrusiveness, our economy suffers as a direct result.

Today’s post was brought to you by the letter “S.”

As in “screwed.”

Chuck Schumer Commits the Ultimate Gaffe

Gaffe – noun \gaf\ - 1. A social or diplomatic blunder 2. A noticeable mistake. 3. In a political sense, when a Congressman unintentionally tells the truth and gets caught doing so.

There was a little incident yesterday that you may have heard about: Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was on a conference call with reporters. The problem is, he thought he was on a conference call to four other Senators. He told the group to make sure they label the GOP spending cuts as "extreme."

Now, gentle reader, you may discount this little exercise as merely politics as usual inside the Beltway. You would do so at your peril. What it so clearly demonstrates is a far deeper problem: the overriding concern with holding onto power instead of conducting the business of running the country in a responsible manner.

"I always use (the word) extreme, Schumer said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use."

This blog finds it heartening that Senator Schumer is so concerned with following the orders of the caucus. It would be nice if he were equally concerned with the orders of his constituents.

You see, our budgetary woes are directly due to the recently dismissed 111th Congress, led by the Progressive Nancy Pelosi. After running up unprecedented amounts of debt, (a goal they pursued with wild abandon) Queen Nancy deigned that she’d leave one final reminder of her legacy as a noose around the necks of the incoming Republican majority in the House in the form of a non-existent budget. A noose that Progressives would later use to strangle anyone who attempts to reduce the vastly increased spending that she engineered in her four-year reign of terror as Speaker of the House.

I don’t need to tell you how much damage that Congress did to the country; the evidence is everywhere. Never before in our history has one Congress done so much to move this country away from its’ Founders principles of limited government and toward rampant socialism. Four years of Progressive destruction, the last two aided by the most un-American president since Jimmy Carter have resulted in the drastic change of the American political landscape from a pasture to a landfill.

And the Progressives aren’t finished ruining the country. This example of Chuck Schumer putting his interest in power ahead of the good of the country is merely the latest.

How much worse do things have to get in America before we understand that we’re inflicting all of this upon ourselves by electing the wrong people to office?

Starving the Federal Beast - Where and How to Begin

While perusing the Interwebs this morning, I ran across two articles I'd like to bring to your attention. The first post is from Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, the chairman and president of Freedomworks, What Congress Should Cut over at WSJ Online. The second post comes from Chris Gacek at Fox News.com entitled How Conservatives Can Limit the Scope and Size of Government.

There can be no doubt that the Federal government has grown out of control. For a long while, the costs of compliance incurred by private sector business was passed along to the consumer, meaning you and I. However, the market can only bear so much. Today's profit margins are so slim that we are in real danger of legislating ourselves out of the market altogether, as a growing bureaucracy threatens to suck the remaining life from our economy.

We are just now awakening to the negative effects of too much government intrusion into our economy. Last Novembers' elections were the first grumpy responses to the alarm clock. We've been hitting the snooze button for a generation. While we search for the coffee cup in our national quest to fully wake up, we need to start looking at what to do to get an increasingly nosey government out of our business.

Of course, we could start just about anywhere. Four years of prog control of Congress now has us facing the dim prospect of high unemployment and a stagnant economy for the next ten years or so. This need not happen. Common sense tells us that the best solution is to get the economy going again. Any effort to reduce the intrusion of government will reap rewards in the marketplace.

Armey and Kibbe give us a good place to start. Their first proposal is to immediately return to spending levels prior to the 2007 takeover of Congress by Nancy Pelosi and her Merry Band of Economy Killers. This move would save us $374B. Repealing the individual mandate of ObamaCare would result in an additional $252B. Just two simple moves to reverse the damage of Pelosi's Reign of Progressive Economic Terror saves us over half a trillion dollars.

A trillion here and a trillion there, soon we're talking real money.

Gacek takes a more legalistic look at what will be required to pare our oversized government back down to a manageable size. His premise (and I truly hope this Chris is a he-Chris, if not, my apologies in advance) is to cut the head of the snake by repealing the laws that power government agencies such as the Department of Education,

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965); Higher Education Act of 1965; Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975); Equal Access Act (1984); No Child Left Behind Act (2001); the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004); and, Race to the Top (2009). Each one of these laws permits the lawyers amongst those 4,200 DoE employees to write regulations that have the force of law.

My personal favorites would be the repeal of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Now, before the radical environmentalists start screeching that I want us all to breathe dirty air and drink dirty water, I'll tell you that these are responsibilities best left to the individual states, not Washington. Common sense, folks, common sense.

I'm sure that you, gentle readers, can come up with a few agencies that you would like to see dismantled. In fact, this would be a fun game at your next cocktail party or family picnic. Try to find one tangible benefit that comes from a large government program. Naturally, you'll need to exclude any lawyers from that game due to the obvious conflict of interest.

I'll even help get you started. Why and in what way is the ban on incandescent light bulbs directly making your life better? Is it the higher cost of CFL bulbs? The eight pages of directions for safely disposing of a broken CFL bulb? How about the mercury vapor released when one breaks that requires the room be vacated for thirty minutes? What about all the American jobs that were eliminated and are now in China as a result of this ban?

See what fun you can have.

In the mean time, as they say in the blogs, read it all.

Economics 104, the Creation of Wealth

I know it’s Monday and maybe our mathematics synapses aren’t fully functional yet, but I ran across another video by Bill Whittle the other day over at Big Government that’s worth your time. It’s short and sets out to dispel the myth that capitalism has somehow failed, or doesn’t work, or does nothing but make the rich richer and the poor poorer. If you believed any of those fallacies, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog in the first place.

Actually, this is pointed more at the likes of noted economist Paul Krugman. The only reason he’s noted these days is for his wild declarations and overall lack of knowledge about free market economics. So this is a type of indirect fisk of his latest column. I could perform a full-fledged, point-by-point refutation of his false notions, but I’d rather let someone else do it for a change.

Cue our cousins from across the Pond: Will someone please shut Krugman up?

We're trying, we really are. Perhaps this video will help.



I’ll try to keep this next explanation simple so that maybe Mr. Krugman can understand it.

Here’s our problem: one day, someone somewhere in the dark recesses of Washington decided to “help guide” our society. This person decided that we would move away from an economy that made things to an economy that didn’t make anything. This not-making of things was called a “service economy.” People would no longer get dirty doing things like making cars and washing machines and computers and tires and desks and clothes and roofing shingles. Their logic was, if people were making money doing things for other people instead of making things, then everybody would be happy. The planet would be cleaner and all the animals would be happy.

The whole world would be one big, happy world and we would all live happily ever after.

But what about all those things we used to make that people wanted? People still want them, but someone else can make them, then they will have more money and the planet will be cleaner and the whole world will be one big, happy world and we can all live happily ever after in a global economy.

So they set about to make sure that we didn’t make anything anymore for anyone. So we stopped making things like cars and washing machines and computers and tires and desks and clothes and roofing shingles. And we started doing things for other people like, uh, cooking. That’s right, we started cooking for each other. And doing each other’s taxes. And doing each other’s’ lawyering. Oh, and gambling, we started gambling. And growing marijuana so we could tax it. And in the case of Paul Krugman, we started doing each other’s confusing for them, too.

And this worked, at least for a while, until we ran out of the money we used to have back when we made things. Now, things are bad. How bad, you ask? This bad.




We now have people with advanced degrees who once created things in Silicon Valley who wonder where their next meal will come from.

So we get to ask ourselves some questions: Are we happy? Is the planet cleaner? Are we better off than when got dirty making all those things we made? Are all the other people in the world happy that we don’t make anything for anyone anymore? Do we have plenty of money to pay for things like retirement, or new roads and bridges and airport runways like we used to?

Is Paul Krugman happy?

Is the person in Washington who thought we would be happy with a global economy happy?

Well, the rest of the world seems to be happy. They have the money that we used to have back when we made things. They love us for that and they would never think of being mean to us since we gave them all our money. They make all the things we want now like cars and washing machines and computers and tires and desks and clothes and roofing shingles.

And we have Paul Krugman.

And Nancy Pelosi, who says "We really haven't gotten the credit for what we have done."

Yay.

Obama Kills NASA

Here's something else to be added to the list of things our country used to have in the era BO, "Before Obama": a strong and vibrant space program that led the world in innovation.

In case you haven't yet heard, NASA Administrator John Bolden, in an interview with AL-Jazeera, outlined his duties as given to him by President Obama.

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

Notice that not one of these directives from Obama mentions that NASA is to succeeed, or excel, or lead us back into space. No, there's none of that. In fact, these directives are specifically designed to reduce and diminish our role in space exploration and research and to make us no more relevant in mankinds' reach for the stars than the Muslim nations he wants to make "feel good".

Someone will have to refresh my memory. What is it that Muslim nations have done to elevate mankind in the past few centuries? Which Muslim nation now has an active and peaceful space program that employs the best and brightest engineers and technicians? Which Muslim nation is it that has contributed one thing in the area of engineering that has led to any advances in medicine, or any other discipline that has helped anyone live longer, or to toil less, or saved a sick child?

That's what I thought.

Psychologically, this is yet another manifestation of Obama's eagerness to punish America. It seems that one trait despots have in common is to remove any hope for the populace. Obama certainly shares this goal for America. Why else would he kill the Space Shuttle program without a replacement vehicle ready to service the Space Station? Why else would he hand over our responsibilities to the Russians, who clearly aren't capable of even the most rudimentary of tasks like safely docking with the Station, as last weeks' failure showed? We must still pay for access into low Earth orbit, only now it is far less reliable and safe, thus putting our astronauts in unecessary danger. In addition, that money goes to help a country that isn't our friend, as last weeks' discovery of a Russian spy ring reminds us.

Having once proudly worked for a NASA subcontractor some twenty years ago, I feel sad for the agency and for the country. It will take many years to undo the damage wrought by this most un-American president ever.

Is there no end to the destruction of a once-great nation under the Obama regime? Is there no institution that will be left intact? Must America sit idly and watch as a sitting president tears down the fabric of everything that we once revered?

If this is what passes for vision under the Obama regime, then let's just go ahead and dissolve NASA. The agency hasn't enjoyed the support of the Dems in Congress for nearly a generation, given that the funding and direction of the agency have been perverted to things like studying "global climate research" and other such nonsense instead of eveloping new technology to help us maintain the lead we've earned as the world's spacefarers.

Perhaps in the future, when we elect a real President, we can resume the course that we originally set upon, to lead the world.

Then we can resurrect NASA to build our pathway to the stars.

Pelosi - "I Pursue Policies in Keeping With "The Word" - The Word, "Um, No You Don't"

We've come to expect many things from those we send to Washington, particularly in the past few years; obfuscation, lying, misrepresentation, and the defense of obfuscation, lying and misrepresentation, which always involves more obfuscation, lying, and well, you get the picture. It seems that all we hear from pols is the same old effluence, so when someone manages to do something out of the ordinary, it gets our attention just because it's different.

Our dear Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has succeeded in introducing a new paradigm into modern political speech - incoherence. But she does it so well.

Observe and cringe:



Granted, she was speaking at a Catholic Community Conference in Washington, so a certain amount of kissing-up to the audience is to be expected. But when she says that she pursues policy in keeping with the tenets of Christianity when she clearly doesn't, someone needs to call bullshit.

Bullshit.

It's not like she pays attention to Catholic doctrine. She's gotten flak about her alleged beliefs in the past, only to be allowed to receive communion anyway, so the elders of her church obviously don't have a problem with her hypocrisy. In a sane world, her consistent endorsement of abortion (in clear violation of church doctrine) would be grounds for excommunication. But the public spectacle of her being denied entry into the church would cause an uproar, mostly from the right going "Yeah, it's about time!"

But it's her insistence that she's pursuing public policy with an eye towards the Bible that is wrong on so many levels, starting with the truth, that this declaration borders on insanity. If she were truly crafting legislation as though Jesus were at her side, then I posit that we would never have seen the Stimulus Bill, Cash 4 Clunkers, TARP, nor the Healthcare Takeover enacted over the loud objections of most of the country. She'd recognize that she was governing against the will of the people she was sent to represent. In fact, I seriously doubt she'd be in politics at all, given her proclivity towards big government and the control it must necessarily exert upon a free people.

She'd realize that she's the prime driver of the historically low approval ratings that Congress is currently enjoying. The Light would show her that she's defying nearly every tenet of Christianity by crafting bills that reduce our standard of living. She'd know beyond a shadow of a doubt that her policies were directly contributing to the downfall of the most productive society in the history of the world.

She'd also know that a firestorm would erupt had someone like Sarah Palin or George Bush uttered the same lines, but her remarks are protected by a fawning media that is trying to misshape public opinion.

If she were at all serious about governing in a manner consistent with Biblical teachings, I'd suggest she start with the Golden Rule and stop exempting herself from the laws she makes.