Check out my first post in the new Humor Section. It’s a mean-spirited, but not very serious take on Presidential History
New Humor Section
Reply
Monthly Archives: October 2012
More Hurricane Sandy Nonsense
The Hill website has a story analyzing the presidential politics of Hurricane Sandy. The experts all agree Obama will get a “boost” by seeming “presidential.” Of particular interest is how he gets to pal around with the Republican favorite Chris Christie who’s been heaping praise on him.
Big F**king Deal. What’s hilarious however is this line:
the president visited the Red Cross, where he declared that his “message to the federal government” was “no bureaucracy, no red tape.”
Does this guy believe the bullsh*t that comes out of his mouth? His whole purpose in life is to increase bureaucracy and create more red tape. Has he read any of the thousands of pages in the Dodd-Frank or Obamacare bills he’s signed? Has he read anything put out by all his regulatory agencies?
For a more interesting perspective, head over to the Lewrockwell blog. Tom DiLorenzo makes the obvious point about flood insurance
That’s the “moral hazard” effect of federal flood insurance. If all those people whose homes on the beach in NY and NJ have been flooded out had to pay free-market rates for flood insurance instead of incredibly cheap, federally-subsidized flood insurance, very, very few of them would build expensive homes in the paths of hurricanes. Everyone else’s insurance rates go up in order to subsidize the beneficiaries of federal flood insurance. Having caused all that housing devastation, the government (i.e., Obama) now plays Santa Claus with the president appearing in New Jersey today to promise fat checks all around a week before the election. Perfect.
Seems like common sense, but I guarantee you won’t hear this idea anywhere on Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, Washington Post, etc.
Don’t Worry
Goldman Sachs Manhattan office has power.
A Big Storm Requires Big Government
That’s the predictable opinion of the New York Times in response to Hurricane Sandy. I don’t agree with that, but let’s assume for argument’s sake that we need a huge government bureaucracy to deal with natural disasters.
New York City and New Jersey were hardest hit by this storm. New Jersey receives 61 cents in Federal tax allotments for every dollar it sends to Washington. New York receives 79 cents. NJ residents have the third highest tax bill per capita and collectively receive the least amount of Federal money back.
So while FEMA may transfer a billion or so dollars to the NJ government to assist in rebuilding the Jersey Shore, it will still be far less money than would be available if NJ residents had paid the same amount in taxes, but most of it had gone to Trenton rather than Washington.
Even if you’re a total left wing socialist, why would you want to have a bunch of your money transferred from your “progressive” state to Kentucky ($1.51 received from DC for every Federal tax dollar paid) while they vote for supposedly small government Republicans? It seems NJ residents would be better served by having a smaller Federal government regardless of how large they want their state and local governments to be.
Cop tases young man suffering from diabetes
Below news story shows a cop in Texas tasing some kid who was just in a car accident because he didn’t respond to him and immediately exit the car when told to do so. The story is all about how cops need more training to recognize people suffering low blood sugar, but that misses the point. Cops should not use their taser on someone who is not posing any threat to others. Supposedly cops show up at traffic accidents to help potential victims. They’re not there to attack them when they don’t immediately comply with their orders.
beneath the dignity of his office
Drudge has linked to this article on the Daily Mail website. It’s an anti-Obama opinion piece supposedly notable because it criticizes the president for using a profanity to describe Mitt Romney.
What bothers me is they state “for a President of the United States to describe his opponent publicly in such a way was beneath the dignity of his office.” I actually like the Daily Mail. It’s a bit less pro-state than other British and American news outfits. But why do they insist on this idea that the presidency has any dignity. The majority of presidents dating back to at least the turn of the last century, have been war criminals. That includes the current murderer-in-chief. Not to mention many have been adulterers who in some cases cheated on their wives in the oval office which supposedly houses this sacred “dignity.” No one disputes that they’re all serial liars. The idea these men have any dignity is something that needs to end right now. Americans need to grow up and understand these guys are liars, thieves, and war criminals. The “dignified” office can’t hide that fact.
Hope you didn’t waste time on the Debates
As promised from a few weeks ago here are some thoughts on the issues as presented by Obama:
Rescuing the auto industry: President Obama refused to let the American auto industry die. I can’t read anymore. He stole money from the vast majority of citizens who don’t work in the Auto Industry and don’t rely on it for their livelihood. He handed it over to two failing companies, GM and Chrysler. He then stiffed their creditors in favor of his Union buddies and forced the sale of Chrysler to a foreign company while basically taking over GM himself. This was a union bailout plain and simple. There would still have been plenty of cars made in America by Asian and European companies in the non-Union South. They probably would have bought most of GM’s assets. Obama’s such an ego maniac he seems to think we’d all be driving 2008 model cars for the next 50 years if he didn’t “take action”.
Reviving U.S. Manufacturing: He doesn’t say how or why this happened, but he says there were 459K manufacturing jobs added since 2010. Depreciating the currency which seems to be his buddy Bernanke’s policy could help create factory jobs in America. The rest of us will pay for it with higher prices. You can’t run huge trade deficits for 40 years if you have a sound currency backed by an actual commodity. The country would eventually run out of money. Instead the US keeps borrowing or “creating” money and other countries like China are still willing to accept those pieces of paper. For now. This is based on an international monetary policy with the worthless US dollar used as the reserve currency. This is a policy forced on the world by the US government.
Made in America President Obama has a plan to bring jobs back to the U.S. by eliminating tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and creating incentives for businesses to bring jobs back to America. This is meaningless nonsense, but I love the Orwellian language “eliminating tax breaks”. Just say raising taxes you jerk.
Making sure everyone plays by the same rules President Obama passed Wall Street reform to make sure that Americans would never again have to pay to bail out big banks. Wall Street reform does nothing to address the Federal Reserve which is the main reason for every credit bubble and the business cycle in general. It actually gives them more regulatory power. It also just reinforces “Too Big to Fail”. The idea that the banksters play by the same rules as everyone else under this president is laughable.
Bringing our troops home from Afghanistan President Obama is drawing down our troops in Afghanistan as we transition security responsibility to the Afghan people, and is on track to responsibly end the war there in 2014. “Responsibly” end the war? Just end it. Every time another American is killed just to so you can pretend the Empire didn’t suffer a defeat there is another illustration of how irresponsible this president has been.
Restoring America’s standing around the world President Obama has strengthened our alliances around the world with friends like Israel, our NATO allies, and our partners in Asia and Latin America. And he has brought together international coalitions to confront shared challenges, such as Iran’s nuclear program. Oh yeah they love America in Pakistan, Japan, Egypt, and the list could go on. Oh and by the way “strengthening alliances” is more likely to get the US military involved where it doesn’t belong. It does nothing to provide security for Americans.
Money Well Spent
Skip The Debates
I think I heard that the first presidential debate will be held this week. There’s no point in watching it. You can simply visit the campaign websites to find out what they’re going to say. These aren’t really “debates” so much as they are softball interviews from the state propaganda outlets also known as the mainstream media. The candidates will just take turns answering with the same nonsense that is on their websites. I’ll try to save you some trouble regarding Mittens in this post:
Energy independence: Most of his stuff sounds good. Increase access to domestic sources is fine. Eliminate regulations on the coal industry seems to make sense.
Streamline permitting oil exploration? Streamline? Just permit it. But whatever this is all pretty much good stuff if he has the guts to follow through on it.
Skills to succeed: Give every family access to a great school. How about you just stop wasting federal money on the government schools to begin with and mind your own business. Local communities and individual parents can figure out how to educate their children if you just let them keep their money.
Provide access to affordable and effective higher education. This is supposed to be small government? Again just let people keep their money and stop wasting it on this crap. Government meddling in higher education has caused tuition to sky rocket because the Feds guarantee student loans. This allows these schools to charge whatever they want because kids have access to government backed debt that they won’t be able to pay off. It’s just like the housing bubble. I can’t even go on with this topic any further because Romney’s so off base.
Trade that works for America: Curtail the unfair trade practices of countries like China. This just means that he’ll do whatever he can to make products from China more expensive. How the hell does that help the average American?
Open new markets for American goods and services. This sounds like old school Teddy Roosevelt style imperialism. But I’ll assume that’s not how he means it. Still how does threatening trade wars with countries like China lead to more markets opening to American goods and services?
Cut the Deficit: I’m not even going to dignify this with a detailed response. Just note that he has promised to continue running deficits for his entire presidency. Supposedly in some far distant future when he’s out of office, there will be a balanced budget if everyone keeps following his plan and the economy grows much faster than it is now and interest rates stay at historic lows. Complete BS.
Champion Small Business: Some of this sounds good.
Lower taxes. Fine, but you need to lower spending too or it will just lead to inflation which is a hidden tax.
Stop increases in regulation. Hey genius, regulations have been increasing nonstop for decades. How about you actually reduce some of them?
Protect business from strong-arm labor unions. This is good, but he needs to advocate the repeal of laws that favor Unions. The government should have no role in employee-labor relations. He should also work to end Public Employee Unions.
Replace Obamacare with blah blah blah blah blah. Just repeal it. Don’t replace it with anything unless it’s to advocate for a true free market in medicine. But this guy laid the blueprint for the whole mess with Romneycare in Massachusetts so he’s got no credibility anyway.
When you click on his foreign policy section it’s called “An American Century.” I think he’s confused what century he’s in. Anyway it would be a bit much to go through this whole thing piece by piece. Mittens is so clueless on foreign policy that he makes O’Bomber look like a genius. But here are a couple of lowlights:
Israel: To ensure Israel’s security, Mitt Romney will work closely with Israel to maintain its strategic military edge. What country does he want to be president of? How is this of any interest to the American people? There is no justification for it on his site. He simply takes it for granted that the USA should do whatever Israel wants, end of story.
Russia: A Romney administration will build stronger relationships with the states of Central Asia by enhancing diplomatic ties, increasing military training and assistance, and negotiating trade pacts and educational exchanges. He’s basically just saying he will do his best to piss off Russia. This is just pure insanity. Literally nothing good can come from this for Americans. If we’re lucky all this will be is a waste of money, but it could be much worse. Imagine Russia increasing military training and assistance to Mexico or Canada?
Iran: He threatens more draconian sanctions, arming their Arab enemies, and direct war if he doesn’t get his way. The fact that the Republican nominee in 2012 would consider another full scale war in the Middle East is more evidence that the party needs to be taken over by Libertarians or destroyed.
Afghanistan: Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders. So basically he will stay in Afghanistan for another 4 or 8 years if some general tells him to. That takes real leadership. Never mind that it’s accomplishing nothing except to fuel hatred of the US, Americans want out of that hellhole, and it’s costing hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
If I can stomach it I will comment on Obama’s views in a future post.