Obama Thanks Jews for Their Votes

Now, mach schnell -
*GET* UNDER* THE* BUS!!

U.S. plans $900 million pledge for Gaza (Reuters)

Jewish Leaders Blast Clinton

Over Israel Criticism

Hillary Pressuring Israel To Speed Up Aid To Gaza (CBS)

And we thought it was bad when Democrats made blacks ride in the back of the bus.

Update:

Saudi Advocate to Run the
National Intelligence Council?

That's right. Chas Freeman is going to be editing the president's intelligence briefings. Let's throw the Chinese dissidents under the bus too, 'cause Freeman thinks the Red Chinese government was too restrained at Tiananmen.

The "Honey, I Got a Bargain" Defense

Look what you've done, you shameless shopaholic women! You've taught Obama's budget chief the "I Got a Bargain" defense. "I saved you so much money at the outlet stores today, Darling."

Policy shift will avert $9 trillion deficit-Orszag

Here's the "money" line:

"All told we are showing $2.7 trillion in costs in this budget that were excluded from previous budgets and I think that is a mark of the honesty and responsibility contained in this document," (Reuters)

I've come to realize we all, as individuals, at some point have to decide who we trust. The world is simply too big and complex to discern every truth for yourself. So, who do you trust for "honesty and responsibility"? President ("I'm not for Big Government") Obama and his minions, who seem to come up with a bigger lie every day, or someone like Alan Keyes.

Another knee-slapper!

Obama Taps Biden to Oversee Stimulus Package Implementation

"The fact that I'm asking my vice president to personally lead this effort shows how important it is for our country and future to get this right," he said.

Is he talking about this guy?


That's not fair, you say? OK - here's the picture FoxNews put up with the story.

Feel better?

He Says Without Irony...

I've decided to start laughing at the Obama Amateur Hour Variety Show. We dissenters have no control, nothing really to fight back with except prayer and our 2010 vote. So, here tonight's entry for best joke of the day. Imagine our straight-man-in-chief, saying, less than a week after he signed the Piracy Act of 2009 (version 1) into law...

... he is determined to "get exploding deficits under control" and said his budget request is "sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't, and restoring fiscal discipline." (Washington Post)

Ahh ...[wipes tear from eye] that's a good one! BTW, his plan includes letting the Bush tax cuts lapse so that capital gains and "the wealthy" take a hit. He's also talking about raising corporate tax rates. Now, there are some proven methods of stimulating job creation for ya'! Oh, Barry... you card! Of course "killing" Iraqis and Afghanis by reducing our discretionary spending on the War on Terror is not going to be a euphemism for making them laugh really hard, but whatever.

Break out the hammer and nails boys! Barry's going to try out every progressive theory in his first 100 days and we may finally be able to bury useful idiocy for good! He may take America with him, but at least we can have a good laugh before we go.

On Confidence and Objective Moral Standards

We hear a lot these days about restoring confidence to the markets. President Obama isn't making this easy with all his catastrophic talk. I mean that in both ways – talk of catastrophe and the catastrophic results in the markets and many American psyches every time he opens his mouth. But I think the problem is much bigger than the progressive agenda he and the Democrats are hurriedly implementing during the president's honeymoon. It is what they have already succeeded in doing to objective moral standards in this country – namely - eliminating them.

First, I need to explain what I mean by objective moral standards. I'm talking biblical values here. I mean the system of ethics characterized in Judaism and further revealed in Christianity by the love and self-sacrifice of Jesus. America, as a Judeo-Christian culture, has lived most of its history with a social order based on the Bible as the word of God. Not subjective. Not what each person feels in his/her heart is right or wrong. Rather, what the Bible tells us God will use as a measure to decide our eternal destination. This is essential to understanding the American character as distinguished from other Western cultures in the last century. Unlike the rest of the West, we didn't lose sight of our ultimate accountability to God. That is, until the ascendancy of the Left in the 1960s.

Since then, the rightness or goodness of behavior has become completely subjective. Each person gets to decide for himself what feels right. And the more tolerant one is has become the measure of one's goodness. So, for instance, to take a stand against public expressions of sexual deviance or even in favor of traditional values has become a moral flaw in character. And even worse, adherence to progressive values is almost compulsory for our young people. Since the Left took control of the education establishment, the media, the judiciary and now the government, what kid can stand for Judeo-Christian values against the onslaught of scorn and derision of his intolerance, which is the modern moral equivalent of mortal sin?

So, how does this relate to confidence? Confidence in our markets, our institutions – our human relationships is a matter of trust. It has a lot to do with predictability. Can I predict how you will respond in a given situation and on what basis will I make my prediction? One thing I never predicted was the arguments against free market capitalism because of this newly discovered dark facet of human nature called greed. I've even heard conservatives nodding and yupping about “greed on Wall Street”. To which I say – one man's greed is another man's self interest. Surely I'm not the only conservative who understood capitalism to operate on a foundation of enlightened self-interest. As a worker, my goal is to exploit my employer by getting the most possible pay for my efforts. As an employer, my goal is to get the most effort from my employees for as little pay and benefits as the labor market allows. We all know the game and therefore trust that the outcome will be fair. We can predict behavior because we know everyone in the game is playing by the rules of self-interest. There is an underlying honesty in free market capitalism.

Until the government arbitrarily changes the rules.

Govt: Yes, you banks have been doing fine making money by loaning money, but we think you might be red-lining certain racial groups [as if it isn't in banks' self-interest to earn interest off of “certain racial groups'” money], so you're going to have to loan money to people who wouldn't otherwise meet your standards of risk. Stop verifying their income and employment and raise the debt to earnings ratios you've imposed on the borrowers or we'll see to it you get sued for discrimination!

Banks: OK – we'll increase our risk as you request [demand/threaten], but we want some way to offset this risk that runs against our self-interest. So, you better find a way for us to sell-off these risky loans [to Fannie and Freddie which are conveniently backed by taxpayer guarantees] and make damn sure somebody wants to buy them [against their own self-interest].

Fan/Fred/SEC [or whichever govt. entity]: We'll bundle some good loans with some bad ones and slap a triple-A rating on them and sell them to some investors [dupes] because the risk to their self-interest will be lowered [less apparent].

Ta da! Government diddles with the free market self-interest driven system and WHAMO! Nobody can trust in anything anymore. See DJIA ticker since Obama's inauguration here.

The predictability of our social order lies in tatters too. Who would have thought even ten years ago that gays would be fighting for same-sex marriage – and would be winning the fight by judicial fiat? Who knew environmentalism would be the new religion taught in schools starting in kindergarten? Who would have believed, when political correctness argued for civility in our discourse, it would end up doing such a disservice to truth, thereby decreasing the value of truth? I wasn't pleased by the election of Barack Obama in November, but I hoped he wouldn't be as bad at governing as conservatives predicted or as good as progressives hoped. Who would have guessed, that in just a month, he would offend or worry our allies, suck up to our enemies and trash the markets with his socialist economic policies? Do any of his friends have confidence in his ability to lead this nation? I think the only one with any confidence left in Obama is Obama himself. God help us.

Do we go forth with confidence? If we had anything left to believe in, that might be possible. But progressives have convinced a majority to “believe in yourself” and without objective moral standards, that really means "believe in nothing". Progressives win. America loses confidence and so much more.

Buy the Numbers?

OK – do this little exercise yourself if you don't trust me.

$787,000,000,000 / 306,000,000 people = $2,571.90 per person

That's the so-called stimulus package divided by roughly the number of people the US census bureau estimates right now – so, let's round our result to $2,600 per person. I'm afraid the Republicans are right. That just isn't much of a stimulus. But wait! That's debt per person – right? After all, we're not getting a check in the mail and if we did we'd still have to repay it eventually. Oh, maybe some of us will directly benefit from the Great O'Spendulus, aka the “American Recovery and Reinvestment (ARR) Act of 2009”. For instance, those people qualifying for government assistance in weatherizing their homes. Now, there's a role for the federal government the founders overlooked!

So, here's my proposal to correct the problem. The government buys a Walmart gift card for every man, woman and child in the United States with the generous sum of $2,500 attached. Mine is a modest proposal, so I rounded down a little to save us all some debt. Why Walmart? Well, Wally World is already socialist in nature – limited choices at “fair” prices. And, you can buy almost anything there. Seniors can get their drugs... the kids can buy a variety of toys... liberals will find all their favorite Obama authored books and Bruce Springsteen CDs... conservatives can stock up on guns and ammo... why, if it is a superstore, the spendthrifts among us can even get food there! And think how stimulative it would be! Every manufacturer with products at Walmart would see revenues go through the roof. Toy makers, tire and hardware manufacturers, plant and food growers, drug makers... you name it! Jobs, jobs, jobs and not just at Walmart or whatever alphabet soup of government make-work programs Obama's team is yet to reveal. I'm a genius!

Seriously though, this is my evidence that Obama doesn't want economic recovery. It took me less than ten minutes and less than a page to develop this idea that truly would be stimulative and less expensive than what the Democrats just did to this country in the so-called stimulus package. In just under a month, more than a 1,000 pages and some 787 billion dollars of debt, the Obama administration has planted our collective feet firmly on the road to serfdom.

Why? I think there are many reasons. Perhaps first, because he can (as in “Si, se puede” or “Yes, we can”). He is a great deceiver – maybe The Great Deceiver. Did you hear what he said at the press conference about economists agreeing the New Deal type intervention was necessary?

“Most economists, almost unanimously, recognize that even if philosophically you're wary of government intervening in the economy, when you have the kind of problem we have right now -- what started on Wall Street goes to Main Street, suddenly businesses can't get credit, they start carrying back their investment, they start laying off workers, workers start pulling back in terms of spending -- when you have that situation, that government is an important element of introducing some additional demand into the economy. We stand to lose about $1 trillion worth of demand this year and another trillion next year. And what that means is you've got this gaping hole in the economy. “

Economists almost unanimously recognize that FDR's New Deal was a disaster which deepened and prolonged the Depression. Politicians argue for government introducing demand into the economy – economists argue for government unfettering the free market to let failing corporations fail and strong one's innovate, to increase efficiencies and let prices fluctuate according to nature's law of supply and demand. FDR's own treasury secretary, economist Henry Morgenthau Jr. spoke before Congress in 1939 and said,

"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot."

But Obama is smooth and articulate. I bet he had 54% of the people listening convinced.

He also said, “What got us into this mess is banks taking enormous, wild risks with other people’s money...” Here's a case of deception by not telling the whole truth. The government – specifically Democrats – instituted government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which, because they were backed with taxpayer's money (“other people's”), took enormous wild risks on bad loans. They did not originate them (they bought them and sold securities based on them), but the banks that did were responding to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which threatened them with anti-discrimination lawsuits if they didn't lend to high risk cases - as if all money isn't green. And who imposed the CRA? Democrats in government. Now, there's also the securities rating problem where GSEs trying to mitigate their risk by selling securities which bundled good loans with bad ones, managed to get their securities rated triple-A. I don't know who was responsible for allowing this part of the problem, but whether Republican or Democrat, I'm 99.99% sure government had something to do with it. But Barry would have us believe it is all the “banks” and “Wall Street” who are irresponsible and therefore, responsible. B.S.!

Other reasons why our new president doesn't care about economic recovery:

- more government dependency = greater Democrat power and influence

- moral vanity and sanctimony = I'm so good and right, historical facts don't matter.

I don't think I need to elaborate on these last two.

Do you think there's any significance to the fact that Democrats passed the ARR Act (which I will henceforth call the Piracy Act of 2009) on Friday the 13^th? Buy the numbers? You and your kids and your grandkids just did. $787,000,000,000 worth. Plus interest.