John Hawkins
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Liberals spend much of their time trying to hide what they believe from the public while conservatives are perpetually frustrated by the fact that the American people don't seem to understand what we really believe. Both problems spring from a single source: liberals lie incessantly. That's not to say that there aren't conservative liars or truthful liberals; there are, but for liberals, lying is the rule, not the exception.
There are two reasons why liberals lie much more than conservatives. First off, this is a center-right country and liberal beliefs are much more unpopular than conservative ones. If liberals told the truth about what they believe and want to do, the Democratic Party would practically be wiped out in much of the country.
Additionally, conservatives tend to think liberals are merely stupid or emotional, while liberals tend to view conservatives as evil -- and liberals use that belief to justify lying about conservatives. After all, if you lie about someone who's evil to keep them from doing bad things, couldn't that be considered virtuous? You may disagree with that, but liberal politicians, bloggers, and journalists live by that rule. Any lie told about a conservative, even one that liberals know isn't true, will be uncritically repeated ad nauseum by the Left until the point it becomes politically disadvantageous to do so.
So, in order to help fight the lies of the Left, here's a guide to the most prevalent techniques that liberals use to mislead people about conservatives. If you're listening to liberals talk about conservatives, you're virtually guaranteed to hear at least one of these techniques used.
1) Question The Motivations: When liberals are losing an argument, they love to shift the discussion not to the facts at hand, but to the motivation of the person on the other side. That's because it's almost impossible to prove what someone's motive may be for a particular action.
Thus, liberals can claim that Charles Pickering, a man who went toe-to-toe with the Mississippi Ku Klux Klan in the sixties, is actually a racist or that George Bush invaded Iraq to try to steal its oil.
From the liberal perspective, the more shameless the lies, the better because the target of the scandalous accusation and his defenders will often waste inordinate amounts of time and energy fighting ridiculous, unfounded allegations that a certain percentage of uninformed Americans will simply assume are true without evidence.
2) The Anonymous Smear: Want to launch an attack at a conservative, but don't have a credible source handy? No problem. Just take a vicious critic or an unreliable source and make them "anonymous."
CBS did it with Bill Burkett, who provided them with the fake "Bush was AWOL" documents during the 2004 campaign. Had they revealed who he was, the story would have been treated as not credible from day one.
If even that proves too troublesome, some members of the media (I strongly suspect Seymour Hersh is guilty of this) just make things up and attribute them to non-existent sources. Since their sources are anonymous, unless they make the mistake of including verifiable details like the New Republic's Scott Beauchamp, it's almost impossible to prove they're lying.
3) The Teary Eyed Spokesman: One of the Left's favorite tactics of late is to pick pathetic figures we're supposed to feel sorry for as spokesmen. That way, if you try to respond to the lies of someone like Cindy Sheehan, you're accused of picking on the mother of a dead soldier. If you try to respond to the lies of Max Cleland, you're accused of picking on a crippled vet. At this point, I'm surprised they haven't found a gaunt, stuttering orphan to serve as Obama's Press Secretary. Worst-case scenario, he couldn't do much worse than Robert Gibbs.
4) Rewriting History: The American public has a short memory and liberals count on that to get away with many of their most egregious lies. For example, that's the factor liberals count on when they try to pretend that George Bush lied about WMDs to get us into Iraq. Lies of that sort usually seem to work until someone points out that Democrats, including our current Secretary of State, were saying things like this before the war,
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
5) Everybody Knows: When liberals want to avoid a losing argument, they sometimes just refuse to have the argument at all and assure everyone that the matter has already been decided. Why, there's no need for Al Gore to even debate global warming with people who could easily blow holes the size of the Grand Canyon in his arguments because he insists that there's a non-existent "scientific consensus."
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? As long as the Kerry campaign ignored them, most of the mainstream media did, too, but then the line of attack was immediately that the Swifties had already been "discredited." Who discredited them? How did it happen? What made them less credible than Kerry, particularly since they made him change his story more than once? Whenever you hear liberals in some form or fashion insisting that the argument with conservatives on a particular issue is already over, it's a good indication that they believe they'll really get their clocks cleaned in a straight up debate.
6) The Ransom Note Method: One of the Left's favorite tricks is to take something a conservative says completely out-of-context and to attack that comment, even if it's obvious that they're twisting the meaning of what was said. This is how the Left can accuse John McCain of wanting to fight for 100 years in Iraq or say Rush Limbaugh wants Barack Obama to fail even if it hurts the country.
This one is especially insidious because some conservatives foolishly blame other conservatives for having their words taken out of context. However, the reality is that if someone is determined to distort what you say, he can always find something to twist around. The people who deserve blame in that situation are not the people whose words were misrepresented; it's the liars who have chosen to misrepresent what they said.
7) The Straw Man: If you can't find a sin conservatives have committed to attack, then invent one. This is one of the most used arrows in the quiver of liberals who claim the Right wants to create a theocracy, kick senior citizens off of Social Security, or reward the rich at the expense of the middle class.
The Left uses this tactic against specific politicians as well. Remember during the 2004 campaign when the Left kept promising to fight a draft that Bush didn't propose and didn't support? How about all the attacks on Saxby Chambliss because he supposedly questioned the patriotism of crippled war vet Max Cleland? Except, of course, Saxby Chambliss never questioned Cleland's patriotism.
Unlike liberals, conservatives believe most Americans share our values and so, if you want to know what we think, all you have to do is ask us and we will tell you.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
A Rookie President
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game.
We now have a rookie President of the United States and, in the dangerous world we live in, with terrorist nations going nuclear, just one rookie mistake can bring disaster down on this generation and generations yet to come.
Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other Presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been President before. He has never had any position of major executive responsibility in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.
Other first-term Presidents have been governors, generals, cabinet members or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and had not spent half their few years in the senate running for President.
What is even worse than making mistakes is having sycophants telling you that you are doing fine when you are not. In addition to all the usual hangers-on and supplicants for government favors that every President has, Barack Obama has a media that will see no evil, hear no evil and certainly speak no evil.
They will cheer him on, no matter what he does, short of first-degree murder-- and they would make excuses for that. Even former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan has gushed over President Obama and even crusty Bill O'Reilly has been impressed by Obama's demeanor.
There is no sign that President Obama has impressed the Russians, the Iranians or the North Koreans, except by his rookie mistakes-- and that is a dangerous way to impress dangerous people.
What did his televised overture to the Iranians accomplish, except to reassure them that he was not going to do a damn thing to stop them from getting a nuclear bomb? It is a mistake that can go ringing down the corridors of history.
Future generations who live in the shadow of that nuclear threat may wonder what we were thinking about, putting our lives-- and theirs-- in the hands of a rookie because we liked his style and symbolism?
In the name of "change," Barack Obama is following policies so old that this generation has never heard of them-- certainly not in most of our educational institutions, where history has been replaced by "social studies" or other politically correct courses.
Seeking deals with our adversaries, behind the backs of our allies? France did that at Munich back in 1938. They threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves and, less than two years later, Hitler gobbled up France anyway.
This year, President Obama's attempt to make a backdoor deal with the Russians, behind the backs of the NATO countries, was not only rejected but made public by the Russians-- a sign of contempt and a warning to our allies not to put too much trust in the United States.
Barack Obama is following a long practice among those on the left of being hard on our allies and soft on our enemies. One of our few allies in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, was a whipping boy for many in the American media, who vented their indignation at his regime-- which now, in retrospect, seems almost benign compared to the hate-filled fanatics and international terrorism sponsors who now rule that country.
However much Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for Israel, his first phone call as President of the United States was to Hamas, to whom he has given hundreds of millions of dollars, which can buy a lot of rockets to fire into Israel.
Our oldest and staunchest ally, Britain, has been downgraded by President Obama's visibly less impressive reception of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, compared to the way that previous Presidents over the past two generations have received British Prime Ministers. President Obama's sending the bust of Winston Churchill in the White House back to the British embassy at about the same time was either a rookie mistake or another snub.
We can lose some very big games with this rookie.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game.
We now have a rookie President of the United States and, in the dangerous world we live in, with terrorist nations going nuclear, just one rookie mistake can bring disaster down on this generation and generations yet to come.
Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other Presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been President before. He has never had any position of major executive responsibility in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.
Other first-term Presidents have been governors, generals, cabinet members or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and had not spent half their few years in the senate running for President.
What is even worse than making mistakes is having sycophants telling you that you are doing fine when you are not. In addition to all the usual hangers-on and supplicants for government favors that every President has, Barack Obama has a media that will see no evil, hear no evil and certainly speak no evil.
They will cheer him on, no matter what he does, short of first-degree murder-- and they would make excuses for that. Even former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan has gushed over President Obama and even crusty Bill O'Reilly has been impressed by Obama's demeanor.
There is no sign that President Obama has impressed the Russians, the Iranians or the North Koreans, except by his rookie mistakes-- and that is a dangerous way to impress dangerous people.
What did his televised overture to the Iranians accomplish, except to reassure them that he was not going to do a damn thing to stop them from getting a nuclear bomb? It is a mistake that can go ringing down the corridors of history.
Future generations who live in the shadow of that nuclear threat may wonder what we were thinking about, putting our lives-- and theirs-- in the hands of a rookie because we liked his style and symbolism?
In the name of "change," Barack Obama is following policies so old that this generation has never heard of them-- certainly not in most of our educational institutions, where history has been replaced by "social studies" or other politically correct courses.
Seeking deals with our adversaries, behind the backs of our allies? France did that at Munich back in 1938. They threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves and, less than two years later, Hitler gobbled up France anyway.
This year, President Obama's attempt to make a backdoor deal with the Russians, behind the backs of the NATO countries, was not only rejected but made public by the Russians-- a sign of contempt and a warning to our allies not to put too much trust in the United States.
Barack Obama is following a long practice among those on the left of being hard on our allies and soft on our enemies. One of our few allies in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, was a whipping boy for many in the American media, who vented their indignation at his regime-- which now, in retrospect, seems almost benign compared to the hate-filled fanatics and international terrorism sponsors who now rule that country.
However much Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for Israel, his first phone call as President of the United States was to Hamas, to whom he has given hundreds of millions of dollars, which can buy a lot of rockets to fire into Israel.
Our oldest and staunchest ally, Britain, has been downgraded by President Obama's visibly less impressive reception of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, compared to the way that previous Presidents over the past two generations have received British Prime Ministers. President Obama's sending the bust of Winston Churchill in the White House back to the British embassy at about the same time was either a rookie mistake or another snub.
We can lose some very big games with this rookie.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Weimar Solution
by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted 03/24/2009 ET
Updated 03/24/2009 ET
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency,” said Lord Keynes.
Ben Bernanke disagrees. A student of the Depression, the Fed chair appears far more fearful of deflation — a vicious cycle of falling prices, debt defaults, home foreclosures and rising unemployment.
Deflation is what America underwent in the 1930s. A Fed-created bubble burst, causing margin calls to go out to stockholders, who ran to their banks that, besieged, collapsed, wiping out a third of our money. As Milton Friedman, who won a Nobel for his thesis that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression, told PBS in 2000:
“For every $100 in paper money, in deposits, in cash, in currency, in existence in 1929, by the time you got to 1933 there was only about $65, $66 left. And that extraordinary collapse in the banking system, with about a third of the banks failing … with millions of people having their savings essentially washed out, that decline was utterly unnecessary.
“(T)he Federal Reserve had the power and the knowledge to have stopped that. And there were people at the time who were … urging them to do that. So it was … clearly a mistake of policy that led to the Great Depression.”
Is Bernanke fighting the war of 1929 in 2009? Surely, today, with the explosion in M1, the basic money supply, there is no shortage of dollars out there, even if they are not circulating fast enough.
To end our recession, Bernanke may be running an even greater risk: hyper-inflation. This has destroyed more nations than deflation or even depression.
Recall: It was French military intervention in the Ruhr in 1923, to force payment of war reparations, and Weimar’s decision to let the currency fall and pay the French in cheap marks that led to the wipeout of the German middle class, the discrediting of that democratic republic and the Munich beer-hall putsch of Adolf Hitler.
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation,” said Ernest Hemingway, “is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
Which brings us to last week’s shocker.
The Fed will buy up $300 billion in long-term Treasury bonds and spend $750 billion more buying sub-prime mortgages to remove them from the balance sheets of ailing big banks, to get the banks lending again.
Bernanke is printing money to buy U.S. bonds.
This new gusher from the Fed, after the $700 billion TARP bailout, comes on top of a Congressional Budget Office estimate that this year’s deficit will be $1.85 trillion, 13.1 percent of gross domestic product, more than twice the share of the U.S. economy of the largest previous postwar deficit.
Concluding the dollar is being abandoned in a frantic Fed effort to stop the recession, markets reacted instantly. The dollar plunge was the steepest since the Plaza Agreement of 1985. Gold shot up to $950 an ounce. Silver had a 12 percent run-up, the sharpest ever. Oil prices surged above $50 a barrel. Commodity markets advanced.
The Fed seems to have confirmed the fears of Premier Wen Jiabao, who said that China is “definitely a little worried” about the value of the U.S. bonds Beijing has purchased with the dollars piled up from her trade surpluses with the United States.
Can one blame the Chinese? They have already been burned on their U.S. investments. And if the defense of the dollar against its ancient enemy inflation is being abandoned, and protecting the dollar is to take a back seat to the Fed’s fight to avoid deflation, than it is indeed time to get out of the dollar and dollar-denominated assets.
For inflation is theft. It make liars and cheats of governments. By eroding the value of a currency, inflation punishes savers and creditors and rewards debtors. And what nation is the biggest debtor of them all? The United States of America.
Insidiously, inflation consumes the value of cash, savings, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, Treasury bonds and T-bills. Friends who lent America money, who bought our debt in good faith, are robbed and made fools of, while speculators who bet against America by shorting the dollar in the currency markets are vastly rewarded.
Given the $3.6 trillion budget Obama plans, the $1.8 trillion in red ink he will run by Oct. 1 and the trillions the Fed is pumping into the economy, gross domestic product should spike, as it did after the far smaller stimulus package of 2008.
We will feel a healthy glow, and folks will begin to sing, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Yet, one senses that we are doing again exactly what we have done before in this generation. Rather than endure the pain and accept the sacrifices to cure us of our addiction, we are going back to the heroin. And this time, with Dr. Bernanke handling the needle, we may just overdose.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
Copyright © 2009 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
Updated 03/24/2009 ET
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency,” said Lord Keynes.
Ben Bernanke disagrees. A student of the Depression, the Fed chair appears far more fearful of deflation — a vicious cycle of falling prices, debt defaults, home foreclosures and rising unemployment.
Deflation is what America underwent in the 1930s. A Fed-created bubble burst, causing margin calls to go out to stockholders, who ran to their banks that, besieged, collapsed, wiping out a third of our money. As Milton Friedman, who won a Nobel for his thesis that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression, told PBS in 2000:
“For every $100 in paper money, in deposits, in cash, in currency, in existence in 1929, by the time you got to 1933 there was only about $65, $66 left. And that extraordinary collapse in the banking system, with about a third of the banks failing … with millions of people having their savings essentially washed out, that decline was utterly unnecessary.
“(T)he Federal Reserve had the power and the knowledge to have stopped that. And there were people at the time who were … urging them to do that. So it was … clearly a mistake of policy that led to the Great Depression.”
Is Bernanke fighting the war of 1929 in 2009? Surely, today, with the explosion in M1, the basic money supply, there is no shortage of dollars out there, even if they are not circulating fast enough.
To end our recession, Bernanke may be running an even greater risk: hyper-inflation. This has destroyed more nations than deflation or even depression.
Recall: It was French military intervention in the Ruhr in 1923, to force payment of war reparations, and Weimar’s decision to let the currency fall and pay the French in cheap marks that led to the wipeout of the German middle class, the discrediting of that democratic republic and the Munich beer-hall putsch of Adolf Hitler.
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation,” said Ernest Hemingway, “is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
Which brings us to last week’s shocker.
The Fed will buy up $300 billion in long-term Treasury bonds and spend $750 billion more buying sub-prime mortgages to remove them from the balance sheets of ailing big banks, to get the banks lending again.
Bernanke is printing money to buy U.S. bonds.
This new gusher from the Fed, after the $700 billion TARP bailout, comes on top of a Congressional Budget Office estimate that this year’s deficit will be $1.85 trillion, 13.1 percent of gross domestic product, more than twice the share of the U.S. economy of the largest previous postwar deficit.
Concluding the dollar is being abandoned in a frantic Fed effort to stop the recession, markets reacted instantly. The dollar plunge was the steepest since the Plaza Agreement of 1985. Gold shot up to $950 an ounce. Silver had a 12 percent run-up, the sharpest ever. Oil prices surged above $50 a barrel. Commodity markets advanced.
The Fed seems to have confirmed the fears of Premier Wen Jiabao, who said that China is “definitely a little worried” about the value of the U.S. bonds Beijing has purchased with the dollars piled up from her trade surpluses with the United States.
Can one blame the Chinese? They have already been burned on their U.S. investments. And if the defense of the dollar against its ancient enemy inflation is being abandoned, and protecting the dollar is to take a back seat to the Fed’s fight to avoid deflation, than it is indeed time to get out of the dollar and dollar-denominated assets.
For inflation is theft. It make liars and cheats of governments. By eroding the value of a currency, inflation punishes savers and creditors and rewards debtors. And what nation is the biggest debtor of them all? The United States of America.
Insidiously, inflation consumes the value of cash, savings, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, Treasury bonds and T-bills. Friends who lent America money, who bought our debt in good faith, are robbed and made fools of, while speculators who bet against America by shorting the dollar in the currency markets are vastly rewarded.
Given the $3.6 trillion budget Obama plans, the $1.8 trillion in red ink he will run by Oct. 1 and the trillions the Fed is pumping into the economy, gross domestic product should spike, as it did after the far smaller stimulus package of 2008.
We will feel a healthy glow, and folks will begin to sing, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Yet, one senses that we are doing again exactly what we have done before in this generation. Rather than endure the pain and accept the sacrifices to cure us of our addiction, we are going back to the heroin. And this time, with Dr. Bernanke handling the needle, we may just overdose.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
Copyright © 2009 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Gordon Brown Can't View Obama's Gift
John Fielding
Well, of course, the crowning achievement of the Moron-in-Chief's attempt to exchange diplomatic gifts with Gordon Brown would not be the utter lack of thought that he put into it. It is the fact that the DVDs are Region 1 and can't be viewed in Region 2, including the UK. Maybe he does qualify for the Special Olymics after all. http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/03/uk-leader-cant.html
Well, of course, the crowning achievement of the Moron-in-Chief's attempt to exchange diplomatic gifts with Gordon Brown would not be the utter lack of thought that he put into it. It is the fact that the DVDs are Region 1 and can't be viewed in Region 2, including the UK. Maybe he does qualify for the Special Olymics after all. http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/03/uk-leader-cant.html
Off With Their Heads
Neal Boortz
Monday, March 23, 2009
This is nuts. I mean, really folks ... we have gone bat-guano insane over this AIG bonus brouhaha. You're being manipulated. The wealth-envy is being stoked. What we have here is a phony outrage wholly generated by the political class to take the minds of the dumb masses (if you're reading aloud, do so slowly) off of the spectacularly irresponsible bailout, stimulus and budget bills that have been passed in recent months. We have an anti-capitalist Democrat party working with a president who thinks that America's greatness is based in government, together with no small number of Republican sycophants, spending this country into oblivion ... and looking for ways to distract your attention in the process.
NO ... I'm not saying that the AIG employees who got these bonuses necessarily earned them. I'm still waiting to meet the man who actually earned every dollar and benefit he has received from his employer. We call him Sully. The Financial Services Division of AIG is a basket case. The fact is, though, AIG had a contractual obligation to pay those bonuses, and failure to do so would have been actionable. A good trial attorney would manage to get double the amount due plus fees. All of the wealth envy and moaning about the evil, disgusting, putrid, worthless rich won't make those contracts void. The decision to pay those bonuses pursuant to the legally enforceable contracts was the right one.
More disgusting than the bonuses, however, is the political reaction to them. If ever there was a time for pitchforks and torches -- this should have been it. Not because of the AIG bonuses ... but because of what transpired in the Congress last week. For the first time that I can remember the Imperial Congress of the United States has passed a law establishing a confiscatory tax to be levied on certain individuals -- not for the purpose of raising revenue -- but strictly for the purpose of punishment. The political class has determined, without the benefit of due process or a trial, that the actions of the AIG employees in accepting these bonuses was a crime, and that crime shall be punished by seizure of the money. Legislation to single out and punish someone without due process is constitutionally forbidden. But who cares? What does the Constitution mean any more anyway?
Saturday night I had to sit meekly, as is my custom, while three fellow CNN panelists blathered on about how these bonuses were paid entirely with bailout funds. Say what? By what magic accounting trick do these rocket surgeons determine that the entire bonuses paid to these AIG so-called "executives" were paid from the very bailout funds that amounted to only nine-hundredths of one percent of the dollar amount of the bonuses paid? Oh, wait! I can answer that myself: It's the same accounting process that causes Chuckie Schumer to declare that "we shouldn't quibble over $200 million dollars" of taxpayer's money spent when the discussion is congressional earmarks, but who then starts spinning around on his eyebrows when a private business fulfills a legal obligation to pay $175 million due pursuant to an enforceable contract.
Thanks to generations of government education, inexorably leading to a populace with only rudimentary thinking skills, most Americans don't readily see the danger in government hosting a popularity contest in which the masses decide who does and who does not deserve to keep what they have earned. Maybe a few news bulletins from the not-so-far future might yank your chain a bit:
"Democrat Congressman Barney (Sylvester) Frank announced today the introduction of legislation calling for a 90% tax on all income in excess of $500,000 paid to any person who foments political dissention on the public's airwaves."
Think about this. If these hacks can use this "public's airwaves" idiocy in order to control what someone says on a radio show, who's to say they couldn't use the same fiction to control income? They control what the radio station can make by limiting commercial minutes and demanding fealty to the "public's interests," so why not extend that control to all on-air personnel? Thank goodness this one wouldn't apply to me. I neither foment dissention nor do I meet the salary cap.
Here's another:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a delegation of flying monkeys this afternoon to deliver a message to the media that she was calling for legislation to establish a 90% tax on all book royalties payable to tall blond women weighing less than 110 pounds."
OK .. got ya to smile. You can come up with your own "punish them with taxes" ideas and put them in the comments section.
The point here is that we have set the precedent whereby is now OK to single out private individuals, demonize them for political advantage, and then march them to the IRS guillotine for a financial beheading. Madam LeFarge for Treasury Secretary. At least she's not a tax cheat.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, March 23, 2009
This is nuts. I mean, really folks ... we have gone bat-guano insane over this AIG bonus brouhaha. You're being manipulated. The wealth-envy is being stoked. What we have here is a phony outrage wholly generated by the political class to take the minds of the dumb masses (if you're reading aloud, do so slowly) off of the spectacularly irresponsible bailout, stimulus and budget bills that have been passed in recent months. We have an anti-capitalist Democrat party working with a president who thinks that America's greatness is based in government, together with no small number of Republican sycophants, spending this country into oblivion ... and looking for ways to distract your attention in the process.
NO ... I'm not saying that the AIG employees who got these bonuses necessarily earned them. I'm still waiting to meet the man who actually earned every dollar and benefit he has received from his employer. We call him Sully. The Financial Services Division of AIG is a basket case. The fact is, though, AIG had a contractual obligation to pay those bonuses, and failure to do so would have been actionable. A good trial attorney would manage to get double the amount due plus fees. All of the wealth envy and moaning about the evil, disgusting, putrid, worthless rich won't make those contracts void. The decision to pay those bonuses pursuant to the legally enforceable contracts was the right one.
More disgusting than the bonuses, however, is the political reaction to them. If ever there was a time for pitchforks and torches -- this should have been it. Not because of the AIG bonuses ... but because of what transpired in the Congress last week. For the first time that I can remember the Imperial Congress of the United States has passed a law establishing a confiscatory tax to be levied on certain individuals -- not for the purpose of raising revenue -- but strictly for the purpose of punishment. The political class has determined, without the benefit of due process or a trial, that the actions of the AIG employees in accepting these bonuses was a crime, and that crime shall be punished by seizure of the money. Legislation to single out and punish someone without due process is constitutionally forbidden. But who cares? What does the Constitution mean any more anyway?
Saturday night I had to sit meekly, as is my custom, while three fellow CNN panelists blathered on about how these bonuses were paid entirely with bailout funds. Say what? By what magic accounting trick do these rocket surgeons determine that the entire bonuses paid to these AIG so-called "executives" were paid from the very bailout funds that amounted to only nine-hundredths of one percent of the dollar amount of the bonuses paid? Oh, wait! I can answer that myself: It's the same accounting process that causes Chuckie Schumer to declare that "we shouldn't quibble over $200 million dollars" of taxpayer's money spent when the discussion is congressional earmarks, but who then starts spinning around on his eyebrows when a private business fulfills a legal obligation to pay $175 million due pursuant to an enforceable contract.
Thanks to generations of government education, inexorably leading to a populace with only rudimentary thinking skills, most Americans don't readily see the danger in government hosting a popularity contest in which the masses decide who does and who does not deserve to keep what they have earned. Maybe a few news bulletins from the not-so-far future might yank your chain a bit:
"Democrat Congressman Barney (Sylvester) Frank announced today the introduction of legislation calling for a 90% tax on all income in excess of $500,000 paid to any person who foments political dissention on the public's airwaves."
Think about this. If these hacks can use this "public's airwaves" idiocy in order to control what someone says on a radio show, who's to say they couldn't use the same fiction to control income? They control what the radio station can make by limiting commercial minutes and demanding fealty to the "public's interests," so why not extend that control to all on-air personnel? Thank goodness this one wouldn't apply to me. I neither foment dissention nor do I meet the salary cap.
Here's another:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a delegation of flying monkeys this afternoon to deliver a message to the media that she was calling for legislation to establish a 90% tax on all book royalties payable to tall blond women weighing less than 110 pounds."
OK .. got ya to smile. You can come up with your own "punish them with taxes" ideas and put them in the comments section.
The point here is that we have set the precedent whereby is now OK to single out private individuals, demonize them for political advantage, and then march them to the IRS guillotine for a financial beheading. Madam LeFarge for Treasury Secretary. At least she's not a tax cheat.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Obama Gets It Back In His Face
John Fielding
Superman Obama is looking a little less super these days. Obama sent a video of "reconciliation" to the Iranians for their New Year. It is posted on his Facebook site. In addition to this are about 40,000 worshipful comments about the significance of it all. I made the mistake of pointing this out to a friend from my law school days via my Facebook account, asking essentially how making a video accomplished anything. She responded that it was somehow "digging us out of a deep hole we were put into over the last 8 years. I asked how the video had accomplished all of that and that "you folks" were less like supporters than groupies. She promptly deleted me as a "friend." I guess I was insufficiently worshipful. These kind of debates were the basis of our friendship in law school. I guess time makes us all cranky, but the Left seems more so. I'd love to see this crew with actual power. Geez.
Well, of course, it didn't take long for the Iranians to shoot back. Unlike Obama's groupies... er... supporters, the Iranians condemned the video for lack of policy substance. Apparently, the only people capable of being fooled by this man are his groupies...drat... supporters. I invited my friend to my site back after she was done with her snit. Unfortunately, I think the Invasion of the Body-Snatchers has occurred and taken away my friend forever. I hope she comes out to play again.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Lyndon Baines Obama
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted 03/10/2009 ET
Updated 03/10/2009 ET
It was the winter of conservative discontent.
Barry Goldwater had gotten only 38 percent of the vote, and his
party had suffered its worst thrashing since Alf Landon fell to FDR in 1936.
Democrats held 295 House seats, Republicans 140. They held 68
Senate seats to Republicans' 32, and 33 governors to the GOP's 17.
Democratic registration was twice that of the GOP. The liberal
press was gleefully writing the obituary of "The Party That Lost Its Head."
Decades might pass, it was said, before the GOP recovered from
its fatal embrace of right-wing radicalism and foolish rejection of the leadership of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton.
Wrote Robert Donovan in the opening lines of his book, "The
Future of the Republican Party":
"The devastating defeat of Barry Goldwater at the hands of
voters in all sections of the country but the Deep South has damaged, weakened and tarnished the party. For years to come ... the two-party system will be crippled."
Donovan and all the rest were wrong. The GOP came roaring back
in 1966 to capture 47 House seats and eight new governorships. In 1968, Nixon led the party out of the wilderness and into a White House it would hold for 20 of the next 24 years.
Full of hubris in 1965, Lyndon Johnson had seized his moment. He
had launched a Great Society that would outdo his beloved patron FDR. He would dispatch 500,000 troops to Vietnam to "bring the coonskin home on the wall" and create a "Great Society on the Mekong." Those were heady days of "guns-and-butter."
By 1968, LBJ's coalition was shredded. Gov. George Wallace had
torn away the populist right. Sens. Gene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert Kennedy had rallied the antiwar left against him. LBJ and Hubert Humphrey were left to preside over a shrinking center.
Why did LBJ fail? He overloaded the circuits. He tried to do it
all. He misread a national desire for continuity after Kennedy's death as a mandate for a lunge to the left and a great leap forward with the largest expansion of government since the New Deal.
By 1968, racial riots had torn apart almost every great city.
The most prestigious campuses had been rocked by student violence. Thousands of antiwar demonstrators had taken to the streets. And 100 to 200 body bags were coming home from Vietnam every week.
By the winter of 1968, Lyndon Johnson was a broken president.
History never repeats itself exactly. But Barack Obama is making
the same mistakes today that LBJ made in 1965.
He has ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, as the
situation deteriorates and the NATO allies pull out. He has no exit
strategy. He has read a repudiation of George Bush as a mandate for a government seizure of wealth and power that exceeds anything attempted in the Great Society.
Fully half of the $3.55 trillion in spending Obama will preside
over this year will not be covered by tax revenue but by red ink. The money will have to be borrowed from abroad or printed by the Fed.
Not only is Barack running a deficit four times as large as
Bush's largest, he has called for $1 trillion in new taxes on America's most successful, who have already seen their savings and pensions ravaged.
He wants a cap-and-trade system to deal with a global-warming or climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax. He is going to provide health care for all, including immigrants, millions of whom arrive uninsured every year.
He is going to plunge scores of billions more into education, though education has eaten up the wealth of an empire, as SAT scores sink further and further below the apogee of 1964, before LBJ and the feds barged in. He is going to ask Congress for authority to spend another $750 billion rescuing the banks.
He is going to find the cure for cancer. He is going to ensure
every kid gets a college education. He is going to drop half of all
wage-earners off the tax rolls, while the top 2 percent, who already pay 40 percent of all income taxes, are forced to cough up more.
Obama is misreading the election returns. When America voted to
cancel the White House lease of Mr. Bush, it did not vote Barack Obama a blank check.
By misinterpreting his mandate, Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not -- unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party -- that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.
By daring Republicans to fight on the issue of a $1.75 trillion
deficit, Obama has liberated the GOP from any obligation to him. He has come out of the closet as a radical liberal spoiling for a fight over an agenda of radical change.
Sooner than any might have thought, we have clarity.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
Copyright © 2009 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
Posted 03/10/2009 ET
Updated 03/10/2009 ET
It was the winter of conservative discontent.
Barry Goldwater had gotten only 38 percent of the vote, and his
party had suffered its worst thrashing since Alf Landon fell to FDR in 1936.
Democrats held 295 House seats, Republicans 140. They held 68
Senate seats to Republicans' 32, and 33 governors to the GOP's 17.
Democratic registration was twice that of the GOP. The liberal
press was gleefully writing the obituary of "The Party That Lost Its Head."
Decades might pass, it was said, before the GOP recovered from
its fatal embrace of right-wing radicalism and foolish rejection of the leadership of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton.
Wrote Robert Donovan in the opening lines of his book, "The
Future of the Republican Party":
"The devastating defeat of Barry Goldwater at the hands of
voters in all sections of the country but the Deep South has damaged, weakened and tarnished the party. For years to come ... the two-party system will be crippled."
Donovan and all the rest were wrong. The GOP came roaring back
in 1966 to capture 47 House seats and eight new governorships. In 1968, Nixon led the party out of the wilderness and into a White House it would hold for 20 of the next 24 years.
Full of hubris in 1965, Lyndon Johnson had seized his moment. He
had launched a Great Society that would outdo his beloved patron FDR. He would dispatch 500,000 troops to Vietnam to "bring the coonskin home on the wall" and create a "Great Society on the Mekong." Those were heady days of "guns-and-butter."
By 1968, LBJ's coalition was shredded. Gov. George Wallace had
torn away the populist right. Sens. Gene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert Kennedy had rallied the antiwar left against him. LBJ and Hubert Humphrey were left to preside over a shrinking center.
Why did LBJ fail? He overloaded the circuits. He tried to do it
all. He misread a national desire for continuity after Kennedy's death as a mandate for a lunge to the left and a great leap forward with the largest expansion of government since the New Deal.
By 1968, racial riots had torn apart almost every great city.
The most prestigious campuses had been rocked by student violence. Thousands of antiwar demonstrators had taken to the streets. And 100 to 200 body bags were coming home from Vietnam every week.
By the winter of 1968, Lyndon Johnson was a broken president.
History never repeats itself exactly. But Barack Obama is making
the same mistakes today that LBJ made in 1965.
He has ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, as the
situation deteriorates and the NATO allies pull out. He has no exit
strategy. He has read a repudiation of George Bush as a mandate for a government seizure of wealth and power that exceeds anything attempted in the Great Society.
Fully half of the $3.55 trillion in spending Obama will preside
over this year will not be covered by tax revenue but by red ink. The money will have to be borrowed from abroad or printed by the Fed.
Not only is Barack running a deficit four times as large as
Bush's largest, he has called for $1 trillion in new taxes on America's most successful, who have already seen their savings and pensions ravaged.
He wants a cap-and-trade system to deal with a global-warming or climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax. He is going to provide health care for all, including immigrants, millions of whom arrive uninsured every year.
He is going to plunge scores of billions more into education, though education has eaten up the wealth of an empire, as SAT scores sink further and further below the apogee of 1964, before LBJ and the feds barged in. He is going to ask Congress for authority to spend another $750 billion rescuing the banks.
He is going to find the cure for cancer. He is going to ensure
every kid gets a college education. He is going to drop half of all
wage-earners off the tax rolls, while the top 2 percent, who already pay 40 percent of all income taxes, are forced to cough up more.
Obama is misreading the election returns. When America voted to
cancel the White House lease of Mr. Bush, it did not vote Barack Obama a blank check.
By misinterpreting his mandate, Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not -- unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party -- that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.
By daring Republicans to fight on the issue of a $1.75 trillion
deficit, Obama has liberated the GOP from any obligation to him. He has come out of the closet as a radical liberal spoiling for a fight over an agenda of radical change.
Sooner than any might have thought, we have clarity.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
Copyright © 2009 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
It's Not the Economy, Stupid -- It's Limbaugh
Larry Elder
Thursday, March 05, 2009
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," the newly installed President Obama told Capitol Hill Republicans.
Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, just days ago, called the popular conservative radio talk show host "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." Then Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele appeared on a CNN show hosted by comedian-turned-pundit D.L. Hughley. When Hughley called Limbaugh "the de facto leader of the Republican Party," Steele stepped right on top of the trap. "No," said Steele, "I'm the de facto leader of the Republican Party," and called Limbaugh an "entertainer" whose show can be "incendiary" and "ugly." Steele later apologized to Limbaugh. Game, set and match.
As the tax-and-spend policies of the Obama administration extend and deepen the recession, the new administration's strategy to deal with the fallout becomes clearer and clearer.
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The Democrats, according to Politico.com, took a poll and discovered that Limbaugh polled higher "negatives" than those of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and radical "reform educator" William Ayers. Given the departure of their reliable pinatas -- former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney -- Democrats believe they've found a new Darth Vader.
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
In the waning, pre-TARP days of the Bush administration, the national deficit stood at about $500 billion. A panicked Bush and Congress then voted for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to "bail out" the banks. Obama signed a $789 billion economic "stimulus" package, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced a $2.5 trillion "rescue plan" for the financial system. Even CNBC's Jim Cramer, a former Obama supporter, called the administration's approach the "greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president."
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
Obama, as part of his $3.6 billion budget, intends to spend -- strike that -- "invest" on things such as creating "green jobs," combating the effects of "climate change," health care and enabling "homeowners" to remain in their unaffordable homes. How does the President intend to pay for all these things? He wants to tax "the rich" -- those earning $250,000 or more. He also promises to close "tax loopholes" taken advantage of by the wealthy. What to do when this European-style redistribution of wealth fails to achieve its desired objectives?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The U.S. government already controls nearly 50 percent of health care spending. The Obama administration, through regulation and mandates, intends for government to control the rest. What happens when -- as in Canada, France and elsewhere -- this fails to achieve its stated goal of accessibility, affordability and accountability?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The 20 banks that received the most of the original TARP money actually reduced, not increased, their lending. And some used the money to buy other institutions. So how does the administration explain the failure of the "bailout" money to "unfreeze" lending?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The government now holds equity positions in several institutions, including, but not limited to, the giant insurer AIG. Since taking these positions, the government's market value has dropped, placing the taxpayers deeper and deeper in the hole. General Motors, one of the Small Three, received -- so far -- some $13.4 billion in federal loans. But its losses continue, and GM now says it needs an additional $16.6 billion.
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The president promised to eliminate pork, earmarks and/or special projects designed to please constituents. The $789 billion spending spree plan he recently signed is larded with pork-barrel projects. How does he square this legislation with his promise to end pork spending?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
Republicans deserve harsh criticism for failing to rein in non-defense, non-homeland security spending when they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. Republicans helped gut the Freedom to Farm Act (designed to wean farmers from subsidies); OK'd pork-riddled energy and highway bills; expanded the federal government's role in education through, among other things, the No Child Left Behind Act; passed -- with the prescription benefits bill for seniors -- the largest expansion of Medicare in decades; and increased government regulation as much as or more than under Democratic administrations.
But the Obama administration now puts spending on steroids, and all but three Republicans voted against the latest legislation. How does the Obama administration explain its failure to achieve its vaunted "bipartisanship"?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
RNC Chairman Steele needs to focus on the merits of the Republican approach -- lower taxes, less government domestic spending, and fewer regulations. Punishing high achievers by taxing them destroys incentive and thus destroys jobs. Transferring money from one pocket to another destroys the initiative of the giver and the given. Private capital knows best whether, how and when to "invest." The private sector "creates or saves" jobs, not government. When Obama's "new New Deal" fails to achieve the desired objectives, we already know what happens next.
Blame Rush Limbaugh, who, by the way, is not just laughing all the way to the bank. At today's bargain-basement prices, he probably owns several.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," the newly installed President Obama told Capitol Hill Republicans.
Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, just days ago, called the popular conservative radio talk show host "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." Then Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele appeared on a CNN show hosted by comedian-turned-pundit D.L. Hughley. When Hughley called Limbaugh "the de facto leader of the Republican Party," Steele stepped right on top of the trap. "No," said Steele, "I'm the de facto leader of the Republican Party," and called Limbaugh an "entertainer" whose show can be "incendiary" and "ugly." Steele later apologized to Limbaugh. Game, set and match.
As the tax-and-spend policies of the Obama administration extend and deepen the recession, the new administration's strategy to deal with the fallout becomes clearer and clearer.
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The Democrats, according to Politico.com, took a poll and discovered that Limbaugh polled higher "negatives" than those of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and radical "reform educator" William Ayers. Given the departure of their reliable pinatas -- former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney -- Democrats believe they've found a new Darth Vader.
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
In the waning, pre-TARP days of the Bush administration, the national deficit stood at about $500 billion. A panicked Bush and Congress then voted for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to "bail out" the banks. Obama signed a $789 billion economic "stimulus" package, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced a $2.5 trillion "rescue plan" for the financial system. Even CNBC's Jim Cramer, a former Obama supporter, called the administration's approach the "greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president."
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
Obama, as part of his $3.6 billion budget, intends to spend -- strike that -- "invest" on things such as creating "green jobs," combating the effects of "climate change," health care and enabling "homeowners" to remain in their unaffordable homes. How does the President intend to pay for all these things? He wants to tax "the rich" -- those earning $250,000 or more. He also promises to close "tax loopholes" taken advantage of by the wealthy. What to do when this European-style redistribution of wealth fails to achieve its desired objectives?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The U.S. government already controls nearly 50 percent of health care spending. The Obama administration, through regulation and mandates, intends for government to control the rest. What happens when -- as in Canada, France and elsewhere -- this fails to achieve its stated goal of accessibility, affordability and accountability?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The 20 banks that received the most of the original TARP money actually reduced, not increased, their lending. And some used the money to buy other institutions. So how does the administration explain the failure of the "bailout" money to "unfreeze" lending?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The government now holds equity positions in several institutions, including, but not limited to, the giant insurer AIG. Since taking these positions, the government's market value has dropped, placing the taxpayers deeper and deeper in the hole. General Motors, one of the Small Three, received -- so far -- some $13.4 billion in federal loans. But its losses continue, and GM now says it needs an additional $16.6 billion.
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
The president promised to eliminate pork, earmarks and/or special projects designed to please constituents. The $789 billion spending spree plan he recently signed is larded with pork-barrel projects. How does he square this legislation with his promise to end pork spending?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
Republicans deserve harsh criticism for failing to rein in non-defense, non-homeland security spending when they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. Republicans helped gut the Freedom to Farm Act (designed to wean farmers from subsidies); OK'd pork-riddled energy and highway bills; expanded the federal government's role in education through, among other things, the No Child Left Behind Act; passed -- with the prescription benefits bill for seniors -- the largest expansion of Medicare in decades; and increased government regulation as much as or more than under Democratic administrations.
But the Obama administration now puts spending on steroids, and all but three Republicans voted against the latest legislation. How does the Obama administration explain its failure to achieve its vaunted "bipartisanship"?
Blame Rush Limbaugh.
RNC Chairman Steele needs to focus on the merits of the Republican approach -- lower taxes, less government domestic spending, and fewer regulations. Punishing high achievers by taxing them destroys incentive and thus destroys jobs. Transferring money from one pocket to another destroys the initiative of the giver and the given. Private capital knows best whether, how and when to "invest." The private sector "creates or saves" jobs, not government. When Obama's "new New Deal" fails to achieve the desired objectives, we already know what happens next.
Blame Rush Limbaugh, who, by the way, is not just laughing all the way to the bank. At today's bargain-basement prices, he probably owns several.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
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