A Union Made Bed

Make no mistake that this was a war that the unions were pining for. They may have screwed up and misjudged the outcome, but they were hankerin' for a fight. Now they want a do over.

They looked at Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder and they believed the picture that his moderate to centrist portrait portrayed--he simply wanted all this arguing over Michigan's right-to-work nonsense to go away. He told more conservative leaning members of his own party to back off right to work and they obliged. He did not want any such legislation to reach his desk and it did not.

But Snyder also made his position known to the unions. In trade for his stance on r-t-w, the union machine would not push for an amendment enshrining a closed shop mentality into the state's constitution. Michigan certainly did not need that in an age where job providers must seek business friendly climates in which to eke out a profit.

While Snyder stayed his course during his first two years (disappointing me and many others,) the unions predictably saw blood in the water and reneged on their portion of the understanding. Unions loudly placed the ill-advised Proposition 2 onto the ballot while also putting their cumulative weights behind two other propositions.

Sadly for the unions, this all occurred under a well focused spotlight.

The voters of Michigan had tired of seeing an adversarial union work force attack the foundation of Michigan's competitiveness in the national and global marketplaces. Bleeding jobs, potential workers, and the family members that must tag along when Mommy and Daddy move elsewhere to collect a paycheck, Michigan saw its population drop over the decade past. The unemployed, underemployed and the newly moved flooded residential curbs with colorful for sale signs as school hallway traffic thinned.

GM stayed afloat but by an ill advised government bailout. Chrysler was gift wrapped and presented to the Italians by the benevolent hand of the US government. The union dominated Detroit Public Schools racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while graduating about a quarter of its students. The union dominated city of Detroit, while fearing an emergency manager, riffled through so much cash that its city council members today are begging for a bailout of their own. Let's not forget union dominated Wayne County where democrat elected cronies toss around taxpayer graft like twist wrapped candies from the back of a parade float.

In front of this disturbing backdrop a disgusted voting population saw a union that was, to borrow a contemporary campaign phrase, moving forward. They maneuvered themselves into a position, with the help of Jennifer Granholm, where they could collect millions of dollars in union dues from people for whom they neither negotiated for nor from whom they had received the nod of representation. I'm certain yet how that didn't amount to theft.

They hinted at illegal strikes in school districts, picketed at universities where tuition levels are so high that many college age citizens can no longer afford to enroll, and put all their weight behind a divisive occupy movement that mocked productive citizens as heartily as it did personal hygiene.

Amid loud raucous chants, bullying, obstruction, and the more than occasional expletive, the unions made their never slaked rage and never satisfied demands known! Too bad for them, it appears that along with the disgusted voters watching the slow to convince Governor had also pulled up a chair.

The union championed Proposition 2 went down in flames and not without consequences.

The unions wanted this fight. They nurtured it by stoking the flames of covetousness among their members, and then turning them loose on a public that was tired of being victimized by the actions of goons.

They made the bed after washing the sheets and pressing the comforter. They patted out all the wrinkles, aligned all the seams, and fluffed the pillows. Now they just don't want to lay down.

Our Pragmatism Runneth Over

What a sad political party the GOP has become. Foundationless. Directionless. Clueless. At least they're pragmatic!

Today the Republican Steering Committee decided that those within the party who disagree with establishment party ideals (i.e. none) must be pushed aside in favor of those within the party who have nothing new to add.

Among the punished is Justin Amash who decided, unpopularly with the establishment, that the Paul Ryan 40 year plan to reach a balanced budget was not aggressive enough.

Let's face it, the GOP is as unserious about dealing with this enormous debt as are the Democrats.

No More of that Of, By and For Crap

There is no Akin relativism here; this was not some GOP party candidate who opened his yap without thinking.  Nope, this is a finely crafted piece of progressive propaganda brought to you by the Democratic National Committee for their convention in Charlotte.

That stupid comment?  

"Government is the only thing that we all belong to."



It looks like we need to change that old "of the people, by the people, for the people" axe to a more simple "over the people."

Benevolent progressives are so beholden to the government on which they hold the reins that they cannot even identify the animal that they are riding.

h/t Ace of Spades

Math, Sacrifice and Big Brother

 A Detroit News columnist accidentally unearths an economic truth: 

Clearly, we have a national economic disaster at hand, unless you figure out that you can offset the rising gas price menace by packing your own lunch three days a month, or just buying the cheap scotch.

It is true that a few cents here and there do not have a significant impact on many consumers.  While we do have to go to work with gasoline in our tanks, if we wish to offset the pittance of higher gas prices with a counterbalance of personal austerity, we can always cut back somewhere else.  The example in the article is great--it points out that the problem can be solved by carving out but three unnecessary restaurant meals a month (apparently sans tip.)  Voila!

Solved, that is, for the gasoline consumer, but not so much for the restaurant owner and her employees.   If there are (as the unblemished source of all things referable, Wikipedia, has to say) 254.4 million registered vehicles in the United States these days, and each of these vehicles represents the loss of three restaurant meals per month, we are looking at 9,000,000,000 fewer meals eaten at restaurants around the nation each year.

The fact is, whether the consumer voluntarily makes a choice to enter into personal austerity or whether the cutting back is mandated by idiotic government intervention into the free market, consumers, employers, and ultimately employees (or the unfortunately unemployed) suffer.  And lets be honest, just because Debbie Stabenow could maybe use a few less burgers over the course of twelve months, that doesn't necessarily mean that she wouldn't be foregoing a delicious salad.  Who are we to judge?

It shouldn't be shocking to anyone that $20.28 a month can be easily compensated for by a gainfully employed columnist at a major metropolitan newspaper, after all such literati would likely have the disposable income necessary to hurdle such manageable obstacles. Or, for that matter, avoided by a buffoon-Senator whose hard-earned wages automatically rise to compensate for those pesky $20 per month price hikes that routinely befall humble and heavily-lipsticked public servants. 

However, I cannot help but wonder how easy it will be for the average waitress to make up that $20.28 per month, particularly when restaurant revenues shrink--what with baloney and cheese celebrating en vogue status.  And saving $20 a month won't get any easier on reduced hours especially with certain customers already tipping decidedly less than the full 15 percent.

We also should not forget that while gasoline prices do affect our pocketbooks when we drive to work, they also have a big impact on every product that is transported by truck along America's highways.  Perhaps we'll all have to forgo a fourth meal.   

So, screw the waitresses and cooks, the cashiers, the entry level custodians and just about every other unskilled laborer in this country who has to drive to work to collect a paycheck.  Let them buy a garage sale bike, apply at school for reduced-price lunches, or answer a government ad for food stamps--after all, we're just cutting back on three meals a month, buying cheaper scotch, staying out of the movie theater, vacationing less, going longer between oil changes and, my personal favorite, showering less while foregoing deodorants. 

Artificially high gasoline prices are easy to compensate for!  All you need is to do a little math, make some personal sacrifices, and beg big brother for a helping hand.

It's the new American Dream.  

Throwing Stones Inside a Glass House Isn't Very Smart Either

Let's be clear about one thing--this doofus Akin was never the pick of the tea party.  He was, in fact, the democrat's favored candidate to face Claire McCaskill in the Missouri senate race.

The Alaskan snowbilly Sarah Palin endorsed another primary candidate as did a number of other national and state (truly) conservative voices.  That being said, McCaskill is the embodiment of generic leftist talking points and would be the poorer option on the ballot were she facing off against a poorly garnished platter of slightly green cold cuts. 

But Todd Akin is no poor man's hors d'oeuvres--he is a Republican.   Which means that after he makes the mistake of uttering something dreadfully dumb he can expect to be excoriated by those of his own party with greater passion than those within the party of Claire McCaskill. 

Barack Obama (and McCaskill) has said so many dumb things about the economy, about the American Dream, about the military, about the motivations of others, about history, and about the country he leads that were he held to the same standard as Akin our dear leader would have been bullied out of his own slot on the ticket by about week three.  But no, only one major political party holds itself to that standard.  In fact, Obama can stand pat behind his belief that a baby who survives an abortion against the wishes of the mother can be killed after delivery--no vetting necessary.  No defense necessary.  Therefore, no apology necessary.

Not the republicans who seem to have turned into a party of losers displaying symptoms of Münchausen syndrome.

For democrats, no apology is ever expected for blatant serial stupidity while at the same time Akin's apology over his isolated absurd statements cannot suffice for any political party--never mind that his abortion position has been consistent all along and that his comments, regardless of their absurdity, fit within his well known opinion on abortion.. 

Am I angry with Akin for not stepping aside once the landslide began to fall on his head?  Ya, this is an important election and the timeliness of. this prolonged absurdity is disastrous.  He got baited into saying something dumb by a cheer leading media and he should have know better. I wish the incident had never occurred.

What pisses me off the most though is that the good old GOP rolled as many rocks down the hill as did the democrats.

This is not an election about abortion.  This is an election about the economy.  How we can allow stupid comments on the former to sway an election while we aggressively ignore stupid ones on the latter is beyond me.  Perhaps Karl Rove knows the answer. 

Heat Wave Musings

While driving through Kentucky on Friday I saw the exterior temperature soar to 103 degrees.  I hadn't been in that kind of heat since leaving Texas in 1994.  So, I cranked up the a/c another notch and comfortably stepped on the gas.  This is what a good dose of relative wealth will buy you--the ability to sidestep problems that are so destructive to those people and societies that are unable to purchase their way out of it.

The media have been alarmed for some time about what to do with climate change.  Their deity, Al Gore, has helpfully suggested a return to the stone age, not literally mind you, but by advocating economic strategies that can lead to no other station.  We must include within these musings the shutting down of integral portions of our power grid, mandated cost increases that force consumers to choose smaller and less effective electric and gas powered machines, huge amounts of borrowed and taxpayer monies redistributed to crony agricultural capitalists who dine greedily at the public trough (see the latest agriculture bill), and mass transit initiatives designed to entice Grandma out of her Beemer and into a money losing and heavily subsidized bus sitting next to a guy with no deodorant.

You'd think that the whole world has reached a boiling point.

Yet, while the US suffers this year from triple digit heat, Europe is struggling with the flip side of that coin.  Many European watchers are concerned with the unseasonably cold and wet weather that might prove near ruin to the London Olympics starting up later this month.  

Power failures have plagued the Midwest and East during this latest heat.  Storms last week knocked many electric customers offline while huge demands on the still operating portions of the power grid have industry analysts concerned.    Several dozen people have died in the US as a result of this blasted heat and with only moderate relief coming in the next day or two the number of deaths is likely to grow. 

Many Americans, including Mr. Gore, yearn for a more European like style of control over its citizenry.  While many good Americans are willing to voluntarily cut back on loathsome energy using devices, too many of the rest of us demand a car bigger than a refrigerator, a refrigerator bigger than a microwave, and a microwave bigger than a cellphone. All of which causes the former VP to gnash his well worn teeth inside his 15,000 square foot Tennessee home, that is, at least while he isn't gnashing them while jetting off to a climate change conference in the belly of a private jet. 

Heat waves come and go.  In the mid 90s those Europeans to whom our elitists are so enamored suffered through a little heat spell of their own.  When the dust had finally settled an estimated 60,000 people had succumbed to the blistering thermometer with an estimated 20,000 dying in French nursing homes alone.  (Hey America--does that make you quiver in anticipation of government controlled healthcare?) Air conditioning, it would seem, was not such a priority to those on our idol continent who, to this day, strain themselves attempting to control the temperature on the outside while they deny themselves the comfort of setting the thermostat just a little bit lower in the living room.

Wealth is what makes America more easily able to sidestep widespread disaster. I can say this because I drive a wonderfully new 1998 Buick that possesses a kick-butt a/c unit. 

America's elites want to destroy the wealth producing capabilities of our free market economy in order to combat climate change.  I would rather we allow the wealth generated by the free market to purchase more effective and market driven solutions to our energy needs that will in turn generate more wealth and the benefits it can unlock. 

This would be a tough pill to swallow for self-proclaimed geniuses like Al Gore and Barack Obama.
They believe they have all the answers, and they believe the market driven solutions arrived at by billions of producers and consumers are a huge portion of the problem and not a solution to it. 

Sixty thousand dead Europeans could not be reached for comment.

Walking to Greece

Barack Obama has singlehandedly created well over 4,000,000 jobs since he took office amid the worst economic maelstrom in the history of the solar system.  Granted, most of them are czars with the few left over being on Michelle's personal staff, but we shouldn't pick at every little thing especially when there is a people to enslave.

Four million is a big number.  Seriously, multiply it by a thousand and you get the much larger (though mysteriously less important) number of dollars that the US borrows each and every day to spend above and beyond what it can afford.  Our country wastes more money on needless shit than the GDP of most nations on Earth. 

But needless is in the eye of the beholder.  We absolutely need the green energy sector because sooner or later the wind turbines in mid-Michigan will begin to spin. Yesterday they were sadly lazy in the middle of a heat advisory.  Meanwhile, coal plants, the low cost and guaranteed round-the-clock alternative to those stone still wind blades are being necessarily bankrupted by an administration and EPA who believes a once exceptional country should get used to its new station in the world==one less affluent and a bit more sweaty staying at the Howard Johnsons. 

Obama sits atop a federal government complex dedicated to regulation and the curtailment of wealth in the hands of a few and this can only result in the stifling of an economyfully otherwise capable of lifing all boats on a rising tide if it is left to grow sans hobbles.  But that is not the aim of this administration. 

After some five trillion dollars in additional assumed debt steered to the pet projects of bureaucrats, the latest jobs report released this week showed an additional 80,000 jobs having been created for the month of June. Incidentally, it takes in the neighborhood of 300,000 jobs every month just to break even given population growth, and it takes a heck of a lot more than that to have tax revenues increase sufficiently to compensate for the flooding tide of baby boomers hoping to cash in on Social Security before that albatross goes belly up too. 

However undaunted by that rather sour report, Barack Obama has hailed the June jobs numbers as another step in the right direction--another step in a long line of unwavering steps that has helped the US economy remain exactly stagnant with substandard GDP growth, substandard job expansion, substandard manufacturing and housing activity, and substandard consumer confidence. 

Barack Obama has been in office for 41 months.  Measuring optimistically this economy has created on average about 120,000 jobs per month since he has been in office.  In all fairness to our dear leader, Barack Obama jumped aboard the con with our ship greatly off course.  In all fairness to our dear leader's detractors, Barack Obama agreed with every policy that sent the vessel toward the rocks and has been spouting disastrous orders from the helm ever since. 

While I would not blame Obama for everything that got us into this mess, after a while his assumed innocence has to become less important than his incompetence in trying to turn things around.  Sooner or later we will have earned some positive results, right?  After all, this is being financed by our grandchildren.

With an election coming up we are left in a very precarious situation.  Those on the left point to Obama's innocence in the matter while complicit extablishment Republicans seem to be intent on getting back the reins of power in order to unleash the true effectiveness of an ever larger bureaucracy run by their own bevy of life long bureaucrats.  Conservatives shudder at the implications of continued ignorance of economics in Washington regardless of who is left in charge.

We know that Obama has no interest in severely curtailing the size of government and I have my doubts that Romney has much interest in cutting much--I mean, here is a guy who advocates climate change initiatives, is critical of Reagan's economic beliefs, envisioned the foundation of Obamacare (admittedly on the state level) and embraces destructive overlord dictates such as minimum wage hikes.

If we are to ever get our debt back in order (and I'm not certain our leaders have any intention of ever doing so) the size of our government must shrink while it dispenses with its desire to control the behavior of each of its subjects.  Somehow I don't think this idea is catching on.  Today it was announced that the brokest nation in the history of all mankind has entered into a partnership with the brokest state in the history of our nation to begin construction on a train project that will ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars that neither entity can afford, will cost future billions in maintenance that neither entity will ever afford and if everything goes as smoothly as could ever be expected will provide a service that is inefficient, perpetually subsidized, and grossly underused--that is until the multi-car family is outlawed, a provision easily adhered to if only the size of families could be regulated.

Today's progressives believe for a fact that things will begin to turn around if only their policies are given the opportunity to work for a sufficient amount of time.  The failures of the Soviet state, European socialism, and the generational enslavement of a billion Chinese prove nothing to this nation's elite who firmly believe that the reason those systems failed is because their leadership made bad decisions and not because there is a definational flaw in centralized planning.

So today's 80,000 created jobs are a step in the right direction.  How many steps does it take to walk to Greece?

Lie? Big Lie? Who is the liar?

PolitiFact awarded it the Lie of the Year for 2009.  Now, let's not over complicate things--PolitiFact is no more an enlightened arbiter of truth versus lie than is my dachshund, but rather a sole proprietary concoction of the St. Petersberg Times.

Of course, to give the Times a bit of a break, the term "Death Panel" was a colloquialism so in a literal sense it was abjectly false, sort of like saying "there are a trillion stars in the sky" is a lie because who can really count that high?  So the Times stepped to the plate, made its award, and forever stamped Sarah Palin with the tag of liar regardless of what the true intent of her words were.

Well, out of Great Britain we are getting a snifter of what Ms. Palin's lie and all the associated ado were really about as an expert in the NHS has estimated that about 130,000 people annually have their lives ended prematurely at the hands of their benevolent overlords.

While there may have been no single death panel overseeing the starving of Grandma or of Great Uncle Angus dying of thirst, they are currently both pushing up daisies.  Oh, they as well as 129,998 others in just the last year.

Obamacare might not refer to death panels.  Obama himself, the economic genius he has proven to be, might not even believe that the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans per year is the only conceivable outcome of his signature supported legislation.  Yet, there is nothing in the law that reduces the costs of health care, it simply adds onerous regulations and myriad boards and committees and commissions.  In effect it caps total spending on health care while making per item procedures more expensive.  So, when the money runs out and the feeding tube gets disconnected, Aunt Edna can clutch her rosary and be thankful that a death panel doesn't exist. 

h/t Bruce at QandO

Georgia Professor Groping For Answers

What could possibly have occurred that might cast doubt onto the integrity of the University of Georgia or one of its professors?  Sometimes there simply is no clear answer.

"I am deeply remorseful for anything I may have done to bring any kind of doubt to the integrity of the university and myself," 

What deep-felt remorse.  

While the professor doesn't sound too certain himself of what he "may have done" that could result is damaging the reputation of himself and his employer, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the professor probably shouldn't have placed an escort ad in a magazine, rented a hotel room, met a potential client dressed in drag, called himself "Sasha," and negotiated a half-hour price for sexual services to be performed on undercover authorities.

That may have been it.

When he figures it out perhaps he'll get back to us.


  

Freep and MLive: Uneducated Legislators Hating on Higher Ed

An editorial headline caught my attention this morning over at the Detroit Free Press.  Lawmakers playing politics with higher ed budget should go back to school. 

The headline caught my eye because it hints that budgetary considerations are little more than offensive moves on a checkerboard.  I reject the notion that balancing the budget according to the requirements of the state consitution is merely playing politics with the budget.

Upon reading the article I decided I wanted to go a couple of steps farther in my criticism.

What is lost on these journalism souls is that every dollar spent in Michigan has to be balanced with a dollar of revenue.  When a buck is tossed out the window in order to pay for the lavish benefits of a bloated state government, that dollar must come from somewhere; from the pocket of a tax payer.  If that same dollar was not given to cover a portion of the dental benefits of a secretary working at the DOT, it could have been allocated toward higher education, or could have been put on a Bridge Card, or could have helped to pay for a Pure Michigan ad playing down here in Georgia, or could have been used to help bail out another generation of corrupted Detroit politicians.  Heck, even a couple of stellar journalists ought to be able to figure that one out.

Alas, it appears as if some jouralists are little bothered by the suffering of tax payers.  Taxpayers in Michigan it would seem are cash cows to be milked by benevolent bureaucrats at the cheering insistence of journalists such as Brian Dickerson at the Freep and the woefully untalented Susan Demas at Mlive.

Dickerson's regurgitated point appears to be little more than echoed drivel of Demas who writes that too many Michigan legislators are not college educated and that this could be why money is not flowing like milk and honey onto the heads of educators at our state operated colleges and universities.

But no one wanted to talk about why lawmakers really don't want to shell out for universities.

The fact is, too many of this current crop of Republican lawmakers don't give a fig about our universities, which they regard as little more than liberal indoctrination factories whizzing away your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

A group like BLM -- whose political action committees give the vast majority of donations to Republican candidates -- can't really be expected to talk about that inconvenient fact, however.

The hostility to higher ed might have something to do with the fact that almost 30 percent of Michigan legislators don't even have a college degree themselves -- putting us 31st in the nation, according to a study by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

But perhaps things aren't quite as easy as Dicerson and Demas envision.  Perhaps there is not a never ending gush at end of the tax revenue pipe.  Perhaps the constitution hobbles legislators from slathering every line item in the budget with dreamed for millions. 

The well educated Dickerson and the well educated Demas might be supreme in their abilities to propagate leftist dogma, but they are not wizards when it comes to economics.   For decades the state of Michigan subsidized the educations of tens of thousands of college graduates who left this state to make their fortunes in Texas, New York, Virginia and elsewhere.  They took our tax money and now pay the taxes on their new fortunes to other state capitols. 

They didn't all leave this state because they wanted to wash the taste of Michigan out of their mouths, but usually they fled because the jobs they needed were located in states that had done a better job at nurturing their own signature industries.  They followed the jobs.

So, what would be wrong with Texas, or New York, or Virginia taxpayers subsidizing the educations of graduates that will eventually settle down in Michigan when the jobs grown in a business-friendly and an entrepreneur-friendly state actually start sprouting?   

There has been recent talk of a potential Chinese village being started near Ann Arbor so that out of country students can fulfill residency requirements which would allow them to languish in the benevolence of Michigan taxpayers like Demas and Dickerson and you and me.  I'm not wilfully so charitable with Demas' money even though she would like to spend some of mine and the Chinese are aware.

When it gets right down to it, of course I want my legislators to understand the workings of all angles including budgetary and economic. 

In a perfect world the same standards would apply to journalists. 


 

The Electability Snooker

Recent polls show that Mitt Romney is catching up to and passing Barack Obama in favorability for November's presidential election.

While it has been said for months by the likes of Rush Limbaugh that Obama would lose to whomever the GOP put at the top of its ticket, establishment party operatives pushed the "Romney is the only electable candidate" meme.  The catchy jingle stuck and Romney essentially ran away with the delegate count despite being a candidate who clearly was not favored by a majority of GOP voters when given more conservative options.

Many of those who ultimately voted for Romney in the primaries did so solely on the electablity issue--he was not in tune with what they believed personally on the role of government in the everyday lives of most Americans, but they refused to take the chance that Obama might win the election if a more risky candidate was chosen.

Well, here we are almost a full half year from the upcoming election and the Obama campaign is stumbling over economic and foreign policy hurdles with almost dizzying regularity.  He is crashing and burning and every bit of news that comes out of Washington these days tosses a little more gasoline onto the fire. Obama might very well prove to be the weakest incumbent presidential candidate in history--and the GOP, at the behest of moderate party leaders, is facing him with a moderate country club republican who believes in global warming, socialized medicine, supported raising the debt limit, TARP, and spent a good amount of his last two decades dissing on Ronald Reagan.

Is Romney favorable to Obama?  Dumb question--I'd also rather lose a toe than a hand.  The better question is whether or not the GOP should have produced a truly conservative candidate to run against a guy that by comparison makes Jimmy Carter appear competent.  

The unelectable guy in this contest was always Barack Obama. 

Obama Evolves Into His More Obvious Self

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
                                -- either the Beatles (or Joe Biden)

Barack Hussein Obama is in a state of evolution having now determined that his support of civil unions in lieu of gay marriage was so yesterday.   He doesn't want to see his kids picked upon when either he or Michelle come out of the closet.  He doesn't want to see anyone within the L-B-G-T communities go without the exact same rights that those non-L-B-G-T members get to enjoy.  Most importantly, he wants more campaign money.

The interest given by everyone to this topic has allowed Obama to do something that no conservative would ever be allowed to do at a time of such great economic upheaval--steer the political narrative back onto the largely irrelevant social issues.  Mitt Romney, of course, was quick to respond with comments at Liberty University thereby lengthening the time when irrelevancy will dominate the airwaves.

In case anyone was interested, Obama's former public stance on civil unions was one of perhaps three or four issues with which I had agreed with Obama, but he needn't lament the loss of my vote over this--I was never going to vote for the buffoon anyway.  What strikes me as comical is the response, both positive and negative, to a perceived change in position by Barack Obama from one that no one believed he had anyway, to a brand spankin' new position that everyone perceived he had to begin with. 

Obama needs huge piles of money because his campaign is charged with the nearly impossible task of expunging the obvious if he is to be reelected.   Employment numbers must be erased.  Production numbers must be forgotten.  Tax revenues must be ignored.  Deficits must be expunged.   Mandated liabilites must be tossed aside.  Prices at the pump must be chuckled at.  These suspensions of disbelief can only be purchased with a huge pile of money and his campaign was not bringing in the cash it had promised America it would raise. 

Obama has to realign his base behind his inept and disruptive presidency and he only has a limited amount of cotton candy to spread around to the maws that open whenever his shadow appears above them.  The gay marriage issue was little more than a marked ace he had up his tattered sleeve.  Conservatives would be better off calling it what it is rather than fortifying their positions on the social issues in response to Obama's rather lame lunge.

We have one big suck of an economy out there.  Don't let Obama's misdirection fool you.

Parents in Massachusetts Suck at Parenting

but, despite the fact that Massachusetts food tyrants have enacted rules that will effectively outlaw bake sales at school events

 “we’re not trying to get into anyone’s lunch box,” [Dr. Lauren Smith, DPH’s medical director] Smith told the Herald. “We know that schools need those clubs and resources. We want them to be sure and have them, but to do them a different way. We have some incredibly innovative, talented folks in schools who are already doing some impressive things, who serve as incontrovertible evidence that, yes, you can do this, and be successful at it.”

 No, of course not. We understand that the nature of your invasion into the realm of parenting is purely benevolent.  You really really, really, really had been giving parents a fair shot at bowing to the will of the all-benevolent and all-knowing food police before things got so unnecessarily necessary, but parents simply weren't falling in line. 

State Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health, said the problem of overweight children has reached “crisis” proportions.

“If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go,” Fargo said.

“But,” she added, “this is a major public health problem and these kids deserve a chance at a good, long healthy life.”

 Yep, you parents asked for it--you practically forced their hand. 

I see unhealthy behaviors every day as I travel this world.  Smoking.  Drinking more than occasionally.  I know people that refuse to get enough sleep but when they wake up they try to compensate for it by quaffing an early cup of black coffee. Then there are those that drink too many sugary drinks, salt their food, and fry up the occasional morel.  And honestly, nothing pisses me off more than kids who are allowed to watch too much television--and do so while sitting too close to the boob tube.
 
Ms. Fargo and Dr. Smith need to go farther in protecting the children of Massachusetts from their sucky parents.    In order for these unfortunate cherubs to get a chance at a good, long healthy life, their inadequate parents must take a diminished role in caring for them.   

Its for the best. 

France and Greece

Recent developments in Europe and the US have reminded me of the frailty of the human condition and the flawed human character that drives it. 

Let us not forget that the human condition throughout all of recorded history has been one of misery.  Man's history on Earth is a perennial calendar of death, disease, pestilence, drought, blight, hunger and savagery toward one another.    It was not until capitalism and the industrial age that it spawned that man began to experience security in his surroundings--and even then it did so only in those areas where capitalism was practiced or where capitalism provided the necessary wealth to drive charity.

Since its inception, capitalism has lived side by side with its detractors.   For every individualist plowing his own soil there were hundreds of others who subsisted miserably on either the benevolence provided by or the forced servitude demanded of others.   These inefficient economic systems resulted in shortages of nearly all necessary produce while robbing individuals of the capital required to improve their destinies.  Generation after generation suffered with the same intensity as those that came before. 

And yet capitalism is still attacked the world over.

Greece is a land that denounces capitalism and is currently mired in perhaps the worst financial situation throughout all of Europe.  It is buried under debt, is woefully lacking in industrial production, is an unattractive suitor for foreign investment, and its population is now bristling at the prospect that it might have to either cut back on its own consumption of the produce of others, or start producing more of its own.  For many years it has sustained its meager living standards by living off of the production of others within the EU, a situation that Germany has tired of.


A majority of Greeks are unhappy with the way that its financiers are forcing them to adapt to conditions not of their own liking--Greeks want charity, and they want it provided according to their own ideals. 

The French too have tired of austerity.  With the recent election of socialist Francois Hollande as President, the French have chosen a candidate to lead them who is decidedly anti-capitalist.  His platform of promises is a cash box full of socialist giveaways that will further stymie French productivity and wealth creation. 

The Socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year.

He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.

This treasure trove of predictable socialist reforms will shrink the economy, dissuade employment, help to chase corporations out of country, add to the number of unproductive people who will live on the backs of taxpayers, and also raise prices.   In a socialist's view, this is pro-growth. 

Call it either a flaw or a feature of the human character, but people will typically care for themselves better than they will contribute to what is perceived as the common good. Likewise, when a government in authority stands in the way of self sufficiency while it also promotes communal consumption, it predictably gets what it begs for--a population of demanding consumers that produces too little to provide for itself.

You go Greece!  Way to go France!

Time to turn another page on the perennial calendar of misery.

Too Much Money Going Somewhere

As if there wasn't enough proof already, a recent study has identified the fifteen richest counties in the USA. But, what do I think this is evidence of proving?

Okay, think very hard.

Where does the average citizen send a lot of its money? Sure, there is the grocery store and the gas station. But, those are typically local entities. So, where do you think large numbers of people, all of them in fact, might send a lot of their money?

Bingo! Washington, DC--that grand recipient of not only trillions of dollars of taxpayer money every year, but over a trillion additional dollars of money borrowed from the Chinese and our grandchildren each year is surrounded by ten of the fifteen richest counties in the United States surround Washington DC.

We send trillions of dollars every year to Washington so that lawyers, lobbyists, special interests, and crony capitalists can fight over it like Michelle Obama would a fine rack of ribs.

Barack Obama laments that the rich are getting richer, but I wonder how much he worries about them becoming more concentrated?

In Utopia No One Gets Offended

This is simply a glimpse at what the future of America will become if modern planners are allowed to control those around them with their vision of a society in which no one can become offended.



An unacceptable mural today is tomorrow's thought crime.

h/t Protein Wisdom

Was it Hilary Rosen, Hilary Rosen, or Hilary Rosen?

Don't ask White House Press Secretary Jay Carney because he cannot be sure which of the three Hilary Rosens that he knows might be the one that visited the President or high level staff at least 36 times at the White House.

For all that he knows, each of the three Hilary Rosens with whom he is familiar might have visited the White House a dozen times.

“I haven’t seen the records. I don’t know that Hillary Rosen– I know three personally, women named Hillary Rosen,” Carney said. “So I‘m not sure that those represent the person we’re talking about necessarily.”

Hilary Rosen is a leftist Democrat strategist, CNN contributor, and White House public relations expert who accused Ann Romney of "never having worked a day in her life."

Rosen's foray into the Republican's War On Womyn farce has roundly backfired while also helping to expose yet another layer of the left's contempt for anything Republican. Sarah Palin was attacked for being a working mom. She couldn't be bothered to stay at home with her children. Michelle Bachmann was an opportunist seeking to use her foster children as props for higher political office. Laura Bush was, like Ann Romney, a non-worker...that was until it was pointed out that Mrs. Bush had spent several years teaching.

Whichever Hilary it was that went to the White House all those times to work on political strategy, it might be time for her to become a bit more self-reflective before she charges onto the battle field of words. If the tables were turned using Rosen's reasoning, one could question Ms. Rosen's ability to comment on mothering because she has a job while her children are home. Isn't it Ms. Romney's lack of a job that, according to Rosen, disqualifies her from commenting on anything having to do with balancing a budget or worrying about economics?

When will this end? One might also question Michelle Obama's standing in talking about nutrition--when did she become a dietician? For that matter, when did Barack Obama ever create a job?

That is the wonderful thing about America--we can all pretty much say whatever we want to say. Lies are easily exposed while integrity is gathered to those who are proven right.

I'm not certain where that leaves any one of the Hilary Rosens--at least one of whom happens to be gainfully employed as a duly qualified public relations expert while also happening to suck at her job.

Scandal at the Secret Service

These are odd times.

Why, just a few short years ago it was accepted among Democrats that an orally beloved President could expect to get himself a clandestine hummer in the Oval Office while being briefed on foreign policy. If George Costanza could have sex on the desk at his job, why couldn't our Commander in Chief? Any follow up investigation and questions pertaining to it had to be "all about sex" and not about Paula Jones' legal rights or little foreign countries that may or may not have possessed chemical or biological weapons. We know this because Charlie Rangle said so.

The problems with the moral frailty of a president are myriad. The acts themself can become the vector of foreign espionage (as has been speculated with the Kennedy administration,) and the acts can wreak terrible damage onto a first family. Perhaps worst of all, at least in terms of reputation, the office itself can be cheapened to the point of disrepect at all levels.

I don't blame anyone but the involved secret service agents for the acts that have ultimately cost them their jobs--we should expect people who are the highest called to have the highest calling. Yet, what realistically can be expected of those who serve the presidential office when a short term review finds the office itself sullied by history of blue dresses, lies about events exposed by blue dresses, and coordinated attacks upon those who were brave enough to refer to blue dresses?

We've come a long way. Time to backtrack.

Now Who Does A Conservative Vote For?

Santorum out.

The Republican still in? Well...

the only thing better than offering the American people a choice between a candidate who supports socialized medicine, TARP, federal minimum wage increases tied to inflation, cap-and-trade, green energy boondoggles, bureaucratic precedence over religious conscience, federal government “stimulus” programs, rising gas prices as a matter of necessity, the wisdom of an individual mandate, and the anti-Reagan sentiment embodied by all big government types who consider a collaboration with Ted Kennedy a great social and political achievement, and one who doesn’t, is offering them no choice at all while insisting that they actually have one.

So now we will be blessed with a truly "electable" GOP candidate who has espoused myriad beliefs in exactly the same big-government solutions as the candidate that we have been told must be defeated!

My last horse in this race has pulled up lame. Palin. Rubio. Bachmann. Cain. Perry. Santorum.

Thank you GOP.

h/t Protein Wisdom

Because it Worked So Well in Zimbabwe

Ken at Popehat pokes fun at Marion Berry and the "certain" academics and theoreticians who find themselves, at times, completely dismissive of cretins such as Marion Berry.