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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Egyptian free speech


The Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and is calling for USA to censor any criticism of Islam.  Listen to Yussuf Qaradawi, the leading cleric of the Brotherhood as he addressed the massive protest crowd in Cairo, "We say to the US: You must take a strong stance and try to confront this extremism like the Europeans do. This [anti-Islamic film] is not art. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is nothing but curses and insults. Does the freedom to curse and insult constitute freedom of speech?" Interestingly enough, there were no curse words in the film except those from Muslims.  Just facts about Muhammad’s yen for wives (Youngest was 6 years old).  Is that insulting to a Muslim?

Both the actions of the Egyptian prosecution and Qaradawi's sermon prove incontrovertibly that the two policies the US has adopted since September 11, 2001, to contend with Muslim hatred for the US have failed. The Bush policy of supporting the democratization of Muslim societies has failed. And the appeasement policy adopted by Obama has also failed.

 

Moreover, the Brotherhood has issued a fatwa, a kill-on-sight order for the producer of the film.  Ashoush, cleric who wrote the fatwa stated, "Those bastards who did this film are belligerent disbelievers. I issue a fatwa and call on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to do this duty, which is to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the film. So, hurry, hurry, O Muslim youth in America and Europe, and teach those filthy lowly ones a lesson that all the monkeys and pigs in America and Europe will understand. May Allah guide you and grant you success."

Just between you and I, I think it’s about time we recognize that the reason for Islamic radicalism IS Islam.  Bush operated under the bad assumption that Muslims riot and kill because they don’t have representative government. Once they have democracy, they would stop calling for death to the West.  It didn’t work. Islam calls for death to the West. Obama thinks they hate because America has acted badly and insulted them in the past.  Hence his insistence that an obscure movie was at fault.  But any 5th grader could see that the movie, who no one seems to have seen [you think those guys rioting, own computers, watch YouTube and have seen the video?] was just an excuse.  Barack, are you smarter than a 5th grader?

The Quran demands submission to Islam by brute force or otherwise.  Speech against the religion isn’t tolerated.  The riots against USA took place in 20 countries--Al Qaeda wasn’t there at every location. America represents Christianity, unlike the blasé attitude Europeans take of religion.  USA is the enemy.  It’s not just Al Qaeda that wants us dead.  It’s the Islam, Stupid.

“Cut off their heads and cut off their fingers.” “Kill the infidels wherever you find them.” (Infidels=’unfaithful’= any faith which shares in divine scripture but doesn’t submit to Allah=Christians and Jews) ¾ of the passages of the Quran deal with violent technique in conquering the world for Allah.  Jihad.  Holy War.  It can also take place by deceptive talk as well as by the sword.  The Arabic word for “war” also means “deception”.  Lying is no big deal. Neither is killing.  Neither is stealing what belonged to infidels. Does this seem like a creed diabolically opposed to the 10 commandments to you?

And it is totally opposed to the United States.  Islam could live with Europe [for a time], so long as they submit to Islam.  But America’s founding principle is Judeo-Christian: God seeks a relationship with each person.  Who then am I to interfere with God and your walk with Him? Thus we are founded on the bedrock that the Creator has given us unalienable rights, liberty of our faith chief among them. Free speech expression of beliefs a close corollary.  Islam and America are directly opposed. 

I don’t know if this means we shut down the embassies and take their declarations of war at face value.  But it wouldn’t be far wrong.  Just keep the modern equivalent of Stephen Decatur at ready. Semper Peratus. Semper Fidelus.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Obama ahead?


I still find it hard to believe that Obama may win this.  I’ve been reading the leftist stuff and they are cooing about how Clinton “told it how it was” about the economy, Romney is unlikeable and rich, and Obama seems sooooo smart.  Hmm.  Taking this one at a time, did Clinton and the Obama convince most people that Bush caused the recession?  That’s a new one on me. I thought recessions were caused by overspeculation, not Presidents.  Millions of bad decisions by individuals acting like lemmings cause recessions.  The last recession was caused by overspeculation in housing.  So did Bush teach all those people to say, “House prices will always go up, always go up, always go up!” ?  The recession of 2001 was caused by overspeculation in stocks, especially tech stocks, which began to decline from an S&P high of 1570 in March, 2000 to eventually reach a low of 713 in October 2002.  So did Clinton teach all those idiots to say, “The economy is so good.  We may never have another recession. The Dow will soon reach 30,000.”? That’s the kind of talk we heard, evidencing the frothy markets. And you wouldn’t normally think of blaming a President for a lousy recovery, except that Presidents (and congresses) can put debt and regulations in place that scare the business community.  That’s what we have now.

 

But it may be that Obama has hoodwinked a majority of voters.  Too bad for America.

The Left is also all abuzz about how Romney is not seem trustworthy.  So then we find out that Obama has a son out of wedlock which surfaced at the Dem convention and that Bill Clinton is telling us all about trust in his speech.  You know the single mothers loved and trusted Bill and now they love and trust Obama.  Would it be too out of place to say this is why they wind up single?  I do see part of their argument, however.  During the primary I noted that Romney was such a proud guy.  He doesn’t admit much guilt and is stiff and formal.  But considering that our debt bomb is headed for  detonation soon, I would say we need an accountant with a sharp pencil to mark through a lot of budget items.  Whether my accountant is a warm, personable guy who winks and flirts is not my concern.  I want him to get the numbers right. Clearly, Romney will do that better than Obama.  Evidently the bozos are out to hire an accountant with a good pick-up line.  As for me and my house, I am invested reasonably well against the possibility of debt-bomb/stagflation. But it won’t be pretty when it happens.  And then comes inflation/taxation as we try to make amends.

 

 

Smart guy, Obama, could not figure out that it was a terrorist attack that took out our ambassador for nine days.  Then suddenly the assessment changed 180 degrees. Best assessment that the attacks were not spontaneous riots is provided by Chris Mudd.  He asked me how many US flags I could round up if I went around Ponca City and bought them all.  Well, I dunno, maybe a hundred total.  “They claimed the mob in Cairo burned 20,000 US flags.  Now that takes a bit of advance preparation, given that it is Egypt and you are trying to find a US flag, right?” Is Obama’s “smart” foreign policy anything like proposing shovel-ready projects when nothing was shovel-ready? Smart like Fast and Furious? Have we brought Iran, Palestine and N. Korea to the negotiating table yet? And then there’s the lost Hope of Changing Washington.  And how a lowering sea level would come and the race card would vanish. Smart?

 

Do people actually drink this Kool-Aid? If so, it is not America’s finances that will collapse, but our Americanism.

Monday, September 10, 2012

What is marriage


We attended Steve’s son and daughter-in-law’s wedding Saturday and Diana’s brother preached.  I had to laugh,  Pastor Dyer had all the Baptists convinced he was a Baptist because of his causal to the point delivery and yet the Lutherans were thrilled to hear him explain marriage as designed by God.  And all the guys from the call committee at our Lutheran church wanted to immediately vote to call him.  Ha!

 

Here are several points and a few I would add myself about marriage.  We may think sitting at a wedding is just a 30 minute casual church affair and the groomsmen may think that if they can tolerate the money suits, the bridesmaids smile and look cute in their dresses, then it will soon be over.  But this wedding  is holy ground because wherever God’s Word is, that is holy ground (think Moses).  God put two people together just as he noticed his bride in the church on earth and noticed that he had the groom by his side in heaven.  And he put the two of them together.  Marriage is like the church’s relationship with it’s Lord and the church is like a marriage.  Do you doubt this? Then look at Genesis 2:7-18.  Adam was surrounded by all of creation and had a perfect relationship with God.  Yet astoundingly God says, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Now how could busy and spiritual Adam possibly consider himself alone, but God knew he was missing something special and specific. It was not good that he be alone spiritually, emotionally, socially or physically.  And 2:18 ends with the solution of a “helper”.  Those who know their Hebrew note that the word can also be translated “compliment”—like two puzzle pieces that fit in each other’s voids perfectly.  And the two represent the fullness of God’s character. The Hebrew scholars tell me that the words for "man" and for "woman" is the same word, just masculine and feminine endings. 

 

Astoundingly, God doesn’t create a woman and let her roam around until Adam finds her like the animals.  In Gen. 2:21-24 He causes a sleep to befall Adam, takes a rib and makes it into woman.  And then He brought her to Adam.  Talk about an arranged marriage! And she is so close to him, so complimentary to him that a man will forsake his family to become one with the woman.  In a similar manner, God brought his Son to mankind when they were yet evil and sinful, died for them and brought mankind together with His Son in the Holy Spirit.  Pastor Dyer asked the congregation to pray for the newlyweds and made them swear to it.  (Which caused my Baptist friend to say, “hey, Baptists are wary of oaths but this time we were convinced.”) And the groomsmen and bridesmaids were charged with supporting this new couple.  And the family came up to gather around Chris and Amy and pray in front of us great cloud of witnesses. Wow!

 

Man alone completes a woman and woman alone completes a man.  I know this because Jesus said it in Matthew 19:4-6.  Love is the centerpiece of the relationship. (So much for loveless arrangements and shacking up) It takes a man and a woman, not 2 men or 2 women or 3 women and a bunch of kids.  (So much for “gay marriage” and the nanny state as dad) Children do not complete a family, they come to it and expand it.  The husband and wife are the priority relationship and other relationships are subject to it.  Hey, I didn’t say this.  Jesus did.

 

It was a good thing Diana’s bro stopped when he did.  Otherwise we were about to storm the popular culture.  A friend told us, “It was like renewing my vows.” A pretty powerful homily, a pretty powerful belief, I would say.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Numbers


Strange, isn’t it, when you’ve been working with some statistics and then you hear others misquote them all over the place.  I heard some Republican say that there were only 132 million people with jobs.  Huh? Then I realized what he had done is take the 156 M in the workforce and subtract the underemployed 23.5 M to get 132.5 M.  But that’s bad math because many underemployed already have a job.  In the interests of clarity, here are some of the jobs statistics. (You can dig through BLS statistics on their website. It is perversely organized and hard to find what you want until you get used to it.)My numbers are perhaps a month or two in arrears in some cases, but basically accurate.

There are about 311 M people in the USA.  243.2 M are age 16 or greater and not institutionalized (Jail, mental hospitals, nursing homes,etc.) and the government calls this the adult non-institutionalized population.  Think of this as the total population that could be put to work.  But what the feds call the ‘workforce’ is really 156.5 M who are non-farm and either employed or currently looking for a job. The difference is 86.7M and they break down as 35.6M retired, 8.1M disabled, and about 43M stay-at-homes and students. 

 

Why the government breaks out the 2.5M farm owners and laborers is because they just start with a mindset that there is always work to do on a farm.  They are never without a job. (1.5M farmers and 1.0M laborers, many of which are family) They want to study only workers who can lose their jobs in some way.  But included in the 156M are also 15.0 M self-employed.  9.8M of these are sole proprietors or family helpers and 5.2M own their own corporations (usually an S-corp) and work for it.  There are also 19M government workers included in the 156M workforce.  They basically never lose jobs, but are treated as part of the workforce. Weird. 

 

There are 143M who have jobs.  The 13M who are unemployed (and currently looking) can be divided by the workforce of 156.5M and you get the unemployment rate (U3) of about 8.3 %.  But what if somebody gets discouraged and isn’t working except to help his uncle in the family bakery and lives with his parents while job shopping except that the government doesn’t know he is still looking?  Then he isn’t counted in the unemployment statistics anymore. That is where all the recent controversy has come from concerning unemployment statistics.  There are 143M with jobs today but in 2009 there were 144.5M.  There are fewer people with jobs, the population has been growing, how could there possibly be a lower unemployment rate than the 10.2% of 2009?  Answers:They are cooking the books by shrinking the workforce. (Remember you have to be currently looking to be counted)  If you adjust for what the workforce was in JA 2009 and project it to today, you get an effective unemployment rate of over 11%.  And just today the feds announced that they had created 86,000 jobs, but another 368,000 joined the 86.7M, i.e. dropped out of the workforce.  How do they determine those folks?  They do a phone survey of a few people who have dropped off the unemployment dole. Pretty fudgy statistic which somehow has been going down for exactly the time the current administration has been in office.  Weird, huh?

 

Subtract the government workers and the military from the 143M employed and you come up with a private workforce number of 111M workers.  That 111M (or 113M if you count farmers) basically supports the entire 311M people of America.  If you divide the workforce by the number of eligible adults you define a “participation rate” which used to be about 67-68% but is now about 63%, lowest it has been since the W-shaped recession of 1978-82. 

 

The median household income has declined from $54,000+ to $50,462 since JA 2009.  But here in Oklahoma our MHI is $39,023 and we are #43 among the states. They make more on the coasts but have much higher costs of living and pay a ton of taxes.  You can stretch your retirement a lot by living here.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Rich


Elizabeth Warren said something last night at the Democrat Convention which reminded me why I’m a conservative and a Republican.  She noted that she was a member of the Methodist church and her favorite passage was “If you have done it for the least of these My brothers, you have done it unto Me.” from Matthew 25.  I love that passage too.  It motivates my Christian faith. But I have a different take on it than some Christian Democrats.  The context of Matthew 25 is the great judgment in heaven by the Son of Man, Jesus.  And when he tells the crowd this passage, it is in the context of judging, “ I knew you.” “I never knew you.” This says that the cutting edge indicator of salvation is the personal relationship we have with our Lord.  So when Jesus says our charity aimed at others is really Him disguised in their place, He is saying that we have to do it personally and in a relationship with Him.  Woe to the guy who tries to tell God on judgment day that he is justified by pulling a voting lever for the government to run a program with other people’s money. No skin in the game!

 

I also love Luke 10, the story of the Good Samaritan.  He risks his own life, he has compassion, he reaches out to another who is different, and he spends his own time and money.  The two guys who pass by on the other side were the first century equivalent of a politician (priests were leaders in society) and a government social worker (Levites handled the funds for the poor and destitute).  Now there’s an observation! The government does aid-to-the-needy worse than any bloke who simply lends a hand.  What’s more, personal charity is truly “giving”  The gift comes without strings attached and the giver has no control over what the recipient does with it.  Like God gives to us.  Not so with government.  They don’t give gifts.  You are entitled.  You deserve what you get. Hence there is no grace (undeserved kindness as God gives). And for the guy who gets something there is no forgiveness for having a messed-up life.  Just a government hand-out.   And if government wants to attach an obligation, it can.  That is what the Romans called Liberitus—a gift with a string attached—as compared with Charitus which is a loving gift given freely.  Christian giving, done under a relationship of God who gives us what we don’t deserve, is charity, not entitlement.

 

I used to mentor system kids.  They get to know you and start looking to you for advice.  “You want to learn how to be rich?” I would tease.  “I can teach you how to get rich.  But first you have to be someone special.  Then, with your future secure, you can learn from everything and have the time of your life learning.” Rich people become something.  Donald Trump becomes ‘the Donald’, hence he can go broke and then make it all back because failure doesn’t change the ‘what he is’.  In the eyes of God you are already someone special.  Then you can take a risk and learn from it.  I see all sorts of people who never risk much.  They are locked into a job because of fear of losing the income and the security.  That’s like a Democrat.  Security concerns just kill their initiative.  But God doesn’t want us marching into heaven after a life of ease.  He wants us sliding in, bruised and shaken but trusting in Him for all we are worth, a grin on our face from the adventure. 

 

OPM, Other People’s Money, can either be opium, a drug or just a means.  I hear a lot of people, even Christian advisors, saying you should have no debt, but most rich people Use Debt Wisely.  When you have an enterprise that needs funds, you need to take on debt, but it has to be a proposition that pays off.  You also need to take care of yourself.  If you don’t, you will never be in position to help others.  So the capitalist motive of self-help isn’t so far from the scriptural admonition to give.  A lot of Democrats hate capitalism and the Christians among them make a big deal of money being the root of all evil.  Just this week, the Convention floor was filled with folks saying that corporations should be stripped of profit.  But without profits, there would be no taxes and ultimately no jobs that would pay money.  Having money doesn’t make you happy, just a tool, but it empowers you to do whatever your Lord shows you to do in that all-important relationship.

 

The Dems have such a lottery mentality.  They think profits/success come from luck or larceny.  Few wealthy folks I know are cheats.  Cheat in business means you won’t have many customers tomorrow.  A few seem to hit it lucky at first opportunity, but then, having not learned the lessons of life the hard way, don’t continue to reap wealth or grow haughty.  But the most haughty folks seem to come from the ranks of the credentialized and educated.  There’s another blunder of the Democrats.  They think that without education, there is no opportunity.  Been there, done that, I have a fine education.  Rich people you meet are often humorously lacking in education.  They just studied an aspect of business and worked like the dickens and made it grow.  Where in school do you learn to be Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or JC Penney?  I notice the Democrats passionately hate corporations.  To hate the boss means you don’t like your job.  Because getting along with your boss is a big part of the work.  My advice to the kids was to figure out how to make money from doing what you truly love.  Yeah, there’s dirty work to be done.  But if you love the rest of what you do, the dirty work gets to be routine. 

 

And I think to be rich you are always looking to the future and what possibilities lie there.  If you crab about how your kids won’t have it as well as you did, if you glorify the past as the glory days, then your best days are behind you.  Self-made people I’ve known always seem to be relishing the future challenge. 

 

So if you add it up, and if I’m somewhat correct about what makes people rich, I see why Democrats hate the rich.  None of their life traits fit with being rich.  They are just jealous.  But if you have a unique relationship with the Almighty, why be jealous of what someone else has?  You’re special as special gets. You are rich no matter how much money you have.

Slick Willie


Bill Clinton got the crowd going big-time.  He is, as Brit Hume noted, the most skilled politician of our time. Amazing how he picked example after example and passionately told the story, beat up on Republicans and Romney and had a crowd of Dems, who were just aching for someone to tell those dastardly Republicans off, wild with support.

 

If only his stories were true.  I caught myself thinking I could refute every one of them, yet you never meet someone so skilled at thumping the points and making a casual listener think he is the genius of all time.  How did Bill come upon this skill?  I remember hearing a psychologist telling about how kids who are abused by alcoholic/druiggie parents develop a survival skill of lying off the cuff and making it stick as a truth.  So when Dad comes home and tells you he is going to whup your ass for breaking his favorite lamp, you suddenly make up a story of some plausibility about how you were only trying to save grandma’s life when she started choking and mom was calling the ambulance and the lamp got knocked down.  Dad in his drunken stupdor will remember about grandma choking and the frantic household but doesn’t remember the doggone lamp.  But now the kid has an excuse which in dad’s foggy thinking, isn’t worth a beating after all.  But it takes more than a good story.  The kid has to deliver it with the passion and emotion of a revival preacher, so that dad thinks it must be right, else the kid wouldn’t be so intense.  Kid also has to be utterly sincere in his lie, so dad thinks the kid must be telling the truth.  That’s how Bill Clinton avoided the abuse of his violent alcoholic father.  Or as Rahm Emmanuel noted wryly, “He’s a particularly good liar.”

 

And so Bill told us in the speech about how Barack wanted to work across the aisle. Why look at what a bipartisan guy he is.  He chose a person who ran against him, Joe Biden, as Veep and Biden was the hero of Iraq in getting the war ended (You do remember hearing that, don't you!?) And then he chose Hillary as Sec. of State.  Why that proves what an aisle crosser Barack is!  He tried valiantly to get the Republicans to agree to $4 Trillion of debt reduction--$2.5T spending reductions and $1.5T taxes, a balanced approach—and those evil R’s wouldn’t do it.  Now wait.  I remember that $4T.  That was the Grand Bargain of July 2011.  They had a big meeting in the White House and it was announced that Obama and Boehner had agreed to the above-mentioned $4T and Boehner was going to propose it to the R’s.  That afternoon, he called a presser to say that although Republicans had disagreements, they were willing to go along for the good of the country.  The following morning there was another White House meeting and this time the press was there.  Obama seemed stunned that the R’s had taken the bait (rats! they agreed!) and he kept adding demands which finally the R leadership said just couldn’t work.  The Grand Bargain died, because Barack had scuttled it himself. 

 

Again, Clinton had the delegates whipped into frenzy over Medicare.  He noted that Obama intended to cut certain parts of Medicare and funnel it into the lockbox, thus saving Medicare until 2024.  Trouble is, that part of saving Medicare was never passed. (just an intention?) Then he said that the evil Ryan had a lot of gall to criticize Obama when his own budget had the same $716 B cut in Medicare cuts—which of course Obama never intended for cuts but savings.  Ahem!  Ryan’s original budget proposal was in 2009 when the Dems had a big majority.  He used the decreased MC spending as a baseline, hoping to advance an alternative that Dems would agree too--and they had agreed to the $716 B cuts in Obamacare.  But the D's demagogued Ryan as pushing granny off a cliff.  So when the R’s cleaned the House in 2010, he revised his budget and removed the MC cuts.  And that is the “Ryan budget” which has now passed the House several times but the Senate will not take up.  But Slick Willie made it sound like the original Ryan proposal, which was likely to not go anywhere, was the official Ryan budget of today.

 

But it isn’t just that Clinton can tell this BS.  He tells it with the purity and passion of a revivalist, and a cocky surety, like his story is verifiable facts.  He’s sincere and stops to tell us how he feels our pain.  And the crowd just goes into a feeding frenzy.  This is kinda humorous, yet sobering.  I imagine those speakers that whipped the crowds into frenzy in 1789 France until they wanted to guillotine every rich person in sight.  Were they jsut like Slick Willie?    

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Michelle's speech


I’ve been sued and gone to court 6 times.  Won all 6.  You never get used to it.  But then after the case ends and the stress is over, I think back about how that opposing lawyer defamed and lambasted my character while giving glowing reviews of that druggie he represented.  I catch myself wondering if I had hired him instead, would he be talking the complete reverse.  And I catch myself wondering how an occupation which began as merely advising a client about the law, has now become, by some lawyers, a sort of snake-oil sales competiton.  Check your Truth at the door.

 

And so I began to listen to Michelle Obama, the lawyer, last night at the convention.  She did an impassioned and articulate advocacy of her husband.  Fair enough.  But there are things she seems to lie about.  For example, her bald-faced innocence in proclaiming that Barack respects all points of view and knows no party lines.  Ha! We have vast data that disproves this. He’s the most partisan Prez in memory.  Probably more partisan than Jackson or even Wilson.   He routinely blames his problems on those who disagree with him, “Republicans in Congress, Washington, Bush.”  Ed Klein, in his biography The Amateur, talks about how Obama has lost so many ardent supporters in Oprah and Union leaders, because he can’t stand anyone disagreeing with him.  He’s thin-skinned and narcissic.  Michelle and Valerie Jarrett form a White House firewall to guests trying to see Barack based upon whether he got his feelings hurt by them in the past. Rahm Emmanuel and Cynthia Romer and many other cabinet-level advisors have quit because of this trait.  So did Caroline Kennedy and the liberal Jewish leadership.  He has singled out Ryan and Boehner in public to ridicule them.  But Michelle the lawyer tells a completely different story.

 

Michelle talks about her wondrous family support that allowed her to attend college and get a good job.  She also notes how Barack’s grandma trained men and then watched them be promoted ahead of her, but her sunny disposition won the day and she provided Barack a good education.    Both Klein and D’Souza tell the opposite.  Michelle has had her life motivated by the bitterness she holds at her father’s being passed over by the Daley machine in Chicago politics.  Barack’s grandparents were ardent leftists—grandma bitter over the glass ceiling at the bank and grandpa an old labor organizer angry over non-union shops.  They lined 9-yr-old Barack up with a revolutionary communist, Frank Marshall Davis and noted anti-colonialist leftists at a close-by university who mentored Barry through his high school dope-smoking years.  Nobody can figure out how Barry managed to afford Ivy League tuition.  Was it donated by a Pakistani source? Foreign student scholarships? Certainly the family did little to support such an education.  So the familys’ legacies were not sunny assistance to Michelle and Barack but bitterness and resentment that motivated leftist politics.  

 

Oh, what a friend we have in Israel! Michelle proclaimed to an interviewer.  Right.  Obama had as his friends, the leading Palestinian advocates like Rashid Khalidi.  Remember how he left Netanyahu sitting alone in the
White House and how he and Sarkozy were overheard trash-talking Netanyahu over a mic they didn’t realize was live.  “Our public disagreement with Israel gives us credibility with the Arab states and compels Israel to act.” He told the Jewish Caucus in Congress, leaving many stunned at his attitude.  Consequently, Jewish disapproval of a Democrat President, for the first time post-FDR, exceeds approval 48 to 45%.

 

Oh, and such a humble man! Michelle noted.  Because so many people had helped them get where they were.

Please refrain from drinking drinks while she talks.  We don’t want to see it come out of your nose.

 

Some people call this “a good lawyer”.  I prefer truth.

   

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Democratic Convention Humor


Ah, Sixteen Trillion Dollar Day!  I’ve improved the lyrics a bit.

Sixteen trillion and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go

We owe our souls to the government dole.

 

Okay, so Barack says he needs a second term so that he can be on Mt. Rushmore.  Now don’t scoff.  If the American people want to vote him onto the mountain, they could do that.  Some say there isn’t room for another President on Rushmore.  Not true!  There is room for a whole second row of faces under the ones there now.  And I understand they are reserved that space for Democrats.  The other party has simply filled up their quota on the top. And we still await a really good Dem to start row #2.


1.     I was born in America when it was pure and free

Creatin’ new jobs and opportunities.

Went down in the recession and we got big food stamps

Obamacare, Redistribution and the Occupy tramps

 

I hope you didn’t miss Dick Durban being interviewed by Bret Baier.  Tricky Dick is head of the Platform Committee.  Baier asked him why phrases like “each person should have the opportunity to use their God-given ability” were deleted from the Platform in 2012 and why God who was referenced 7 times before is now out of the text.  Durban went ballistic.  He accused Baier of concluding the Republican notion that Dems were Godless and he was sick of it.  To which Baier simply said he had no such conclusion; he was just asking. To which Dick went wild again and insisted that Baier was drawing conclusions.  No, Brett insisted.  He was not.  Durban said that was good, because  any conclusion he might draw was wrong.  So Baier asked why the reference to Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel was left out this year.  Now Durban went really zonkers, saying that Baier was drawing conclusions again.  That this was just a platform and under no circumstances was anyone to draw any conclusions.  So there.  Try not to think about it.

 

2.     Some people think a man’s made outta mud

A rich man’s a turnip and we can get blood.

Divvy up to Obama and he wants every bit.

If you own a business, then you didn’t build it.

 

Of great interest is Obama’s handling of the economy.  Can anyone tell me how a President Handles an Economy.  I envision something like Discovery Channel’s Surgery series where the docs all have some guy opened up and they are handling the entrails.  Personally I don’t think Presidents handle the economy.  I’ve never observed this.  They all want a growing economy right?  And we know some of what that takes.  Like low interest rates so that businesses can borrow and grow.  So what can a President do about interest rates.  Well, short term rates come via the Fed which is an Open Market Committee of economists and bankers.  No President on the Fed.  Long term rates come via an international bond market.  Well, what about stimulating the economy with federal spending?  But then the Federal governments best efforts can only spend where government has interests, like National Parks and Military and Food Stamps.  Plus for every dollar taken in taxes, feds distribute only about 71 cents, because they are inefficient and there is much corruption in things like Medicaid.  And if a dollar spent doesn’t create an ongoing economic benefit (like a statue in the park which does nothing to make future economic effects), then it is just money down a rathole. About the best a Prez can do is talk like a cheerleader and step aside and let the free market provide growth as it will.  Presidents don’t stimulate, they can only stop building roadblocks. That’s right, Barack, you built it!

 

3.     If ya’ see me comin’ better step aside

51% of us take it outa your hide

We don’t pay no taxes and we hate the rich

We vote like Peronistas and we love to bitch.

 

Okay, so political cartoon of the week is Eric Allie’s picture of the eye doctor holding up an eyechart that says “$16,000,000,000,000.00 in debt” and the Democrat donkey squinting and reading “R-A-C-I-S-T”.  And did I notice that some guy named Castro is giving the keynote address for the Democrats tonight?  Hey!! Stop that!  I saw you drawing a conclusion.  I saw you throwing your arms in the air and saying, "I knew it!  I knew it was coming to that!"

 

Sixteen trillion and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go

We owe our souls to the government dole.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Go see "2016"


We saw “2016”.  Boy, did I learn a few things.

 

In brief, Dinesh D’Souza lays out a convincing case that Obama is a leftist anti-colonialist.  Having grown up in Third World, being the same age as Obama, he recognized this common belief system from the undeveloped world, and proves his case by Obama’s quotes from his book, “Dreams From My Father” then verifies it with many who have known Obama since childhood and relatives in Kenya.  Basically, Barack grew up for 9 years with an absent father.  Stanley Ann Dunham was a leftist (Marxist?) anti-American hippie who married Barrack Sr., a revolutionary anti-colonialist, studying in USA. She made Barack Obama Senior a sort of heroic figure for Barry Jr. even after her divorce (when Barry was 1).  She married a guy from Indonesia and raised Barry there until her second husband got favorably involved with an American oil company and she turned on him.  Barry was sent back to grandparents in Hawaii.  Grandpa was also a lefty.  He searched and found  a bonafied revolutionary communist and Afro-American, Frank Davis, to mentor young Barry. Through all this, Barry is trying to find his father’s ideals.  He only met Barack Sr. once at age 10.  In 1982 his dad died in a drunken car accident in Kenya.  Barry went there to find his roots, and took up the anti-colonialist cause quite naturally as it was related to the Marxism of his high school years with Davis. He found out his real father was actually a crumb bum with 5 wives he beat in his drunkenness.  But Barack vowed to adopt the old man’s ideals and become what his dad never could achieve.

 

Colonialism, of course, is when a developed nation overtakes a Third World country for its resources.  Often it uses the elite of that country to help them rule, but treats the natives like dirt.  So Anti-colonialism is the political point of view to throw out the white Europeanbums and then take retribution on all who have helped them, i.e. the residual rich.  It is both racist against whites, somewhat anti-development, and often espouses leftist schemes such as land reforms and confiscation of the property of the rich—a good Marxist fit.  In his book, this is what Obama pledged his life to.  His relatives confirm this.  And it is strikingly like the senior Obama’s outlook. 

 

And so I learn stuff.  I have often wondered why someone from say, Nepal, would be so virulently hateful against Israel. What did Israel ever do to anyone from Nepal?  Yet when you look at the UN votes, it is often 120-2 to condemn some reasonable action of Israel.  The answer, D’Souza says, is that Israel is implicated as a colonialist incursion into the Middle East, and everyone from the Third World hates colonialism.  Guilt by association.  Ditto the USA which is looked upon as white, European, and the modern extension of Europe.  Never mind that our own country was a revolt against British colonialism.  Why didn’t D’Souza get caught up in anti-colonialism?  He tells how he would sit on the floor of his house with an encyclopedia and read about all the famous empires of the world as a child.  He grew to admire USA for being an “empire of ideals”, different than the European empires.

 

Barack has a half-brother from Nairobi, an austere writer and intellect who lives pennilessly but has published a book.  He takes big issue with both Barack Obamas and their anti-colonialism.  Our Prez won’t even allow a Visa for George to come to Atlanta to visit his own mother, now here in the States. Persona non gratia.  The first Presidential act was to send back a bust of Winston Churchill to the Brits.  Why?  Because Winny was the head of British colonial office in the 1930s and Barack has a visceral hated of the man.  Barack goes around bowing to the Third World kings.  Why? Because it’s like an apology for American colonialism.  D’Souza says these things look weird to Americans but they have real meaning to an anti-colonialist socialist.

 

What gets really frightening is what BO wants to do the USA—basically dismantle it and destroy our power.  He would redistribute our wealth to the ‘deserving’ Third World.  He will not stop Iran from nukes.  He wants to secretly go beyond START and destroy our nuclear weapons until we are on par with Britain and France. To dismantle our economy he wants to spend without regard to deficit and give us a currency crisis while taking advantage of the crisis to install socialism.  That is why he almost seems to have a tin ear politically to some things.  He disses union Democrats(white guys). He insists on class warfare even when Dems complain it goes too far.  He uses Executive fiat to remove work from Workfare, expand food stamps, and Dream Act which hasn’t been acted upon.  Finally, Dinesh interviews David Walker, former Comptroller of budget who talks about how a Debt crisis will be swift.  The US bond market will crash, interest will skyrocket in a matter of days or weeks, recession from lack of credit will swamp our economy. 

 

Good documentary.  Go see it.