Last 2 weeks of News

I have been MIA the last two weeks, to much work and to do at home in the nice Spring weather to spend time on the computer.

1) California Supreme court rules Prop 8 is a “legal” amendment but stating the only the term marriage is what was made illegal for same sex couples in California. This is a ruling I actual agree with. Marriage is a religious term and should be taken totally out of the Governments hands. The government should create a mutual support contract to be filed with a government agency to give the “marriage rights” to any two people who want to enter such a relationship. Also a dissolution of the mutual support contract form and process would be needed. No need for lawyers or courts. Just a notarized form.
A good legal analysis can be found here.

2) Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, A normal far left wing hack job who thinks that they no better than anyone else what is “good” and “just” for all without any regard for the actual law.

3) Government Motors is now bankrupt. Big shock here, a poorly managed company for the last 30 years that has a huge union presence so short and long term costs can’t be controlled. To bad it will result in a motor company which is fascist in nature, supposedly privately owned by run by the government.

4) Obama stumping for his health care plans passage this summer before the bill is even written. The plan is here but there are no specifics. Normal politics, talk, give speech, no substance and rush through a plan in the darkness of night that nobody can read or comprehend since a true debate of the bill will result in it being something a vast majority of US citizen’s do not want.

5) North Korea leaves the peace Armistice, blows up a nuclear weapon and tests some long range missiles, the US response, maybe we can get a harsher worded letter to be considered at the UN but no passed. While this is going on make statements that this is not tolerable and North Korea is a rogue state, yada yada yada, nothing changed in 20 years on this front.

Searching for a silver lining but do not see anywhere that people are being told to be responsible for themselves and live with the consequences of poor decision making. Another couple of weeks on the road to fascism.

Saturday’s cartoons – politics

from townhall.com

US Government spending will bankrupt the world

The US federal government is in the process of bankrupting the world as accounting practices that the federal government does not allow private companies to use are used to hide the real government debt. This cuts across party lines and the end of liberty and personnel freedom in the world.

The total economic of the world based on the ponzi scheme known as government spending is close (if not already beyond) the tipping point. Paper currency will be virtually worthless since the governments that print them have no possible way to back their value.

Government spending is the problem and drastic government spending cuts (real cuts not decreasing the rate of increase) of 50 to 90+% in some cases are required.

Federal obligations exceed world GDP, Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?

As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the “2008 Financial Report of the United States Government” as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury
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“The federal government is bankrupt,” Williams told WND. “In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary.”

Assuming 330 million Americans, 65.6 trillion debt is equal to $198,484 per American. This is on top of any state, local or personnel debt.

If you want to really understand the what the future holds and the consequences read the A Citizen’s Guide published by the treasury department.
It would be nice if government would live by this motto in the report.

Using the government accounting methods that if any private business used, the CEO, CFO and board of directors would be in jail, here are some tables from the report on future predictions.

These projects do not take into account the money spent since Oct 1, 2008. TARP and the new stimulus plan are on top of this staggering debt.

Americans need to hold our employees the elected government officials responsible. New blood is needed.

Why America is failing and the stimulus will make it worse

I have found some graphs on the St. Louis Fed’s web site.
US Employment by sector

Total, Private vs government employees – looking at the these charts, it would look like government employment is growing at a rate about equal to private employment. One needs to dig deeper into the private industry numbers.

Total Nonfarm Payrolls: All Employees

Private Industry Employees

All Employees: Government

The problem is the mix of private jobs, I divide the private jobs into 5 categories
1) Those who make items

Durable Goods Manufacturing

Nondurable Goods Manufacturing

Goods-Producing Industries

Construction

Natural Resources & Mining

2) Those who move the goods made by the first group of people
Trade, Transportation & Utilities

Wholesale Trade

Retail Trade

3) Those who coordinate, support and make money off groups 1 and 2
Information Services

Professional & Business Services

Financial Activities

4) Those who provide services to those in the 1st three groups

Education & Health Services

Service-Providing Industries

Leisure & Hospitality

Other Services

5) Those who take a share from each of the 4 groups to give to those who are not in the 1st 4 groups
All Employees: Government

As America continue to produce less and less finished products from raw materials the result is a fixed amount of anything with real intrinsic value. This results in a capping of the amount of wealth America has. Since the capping of the amount of wealth is occurring as the population still grows everyone must get a smaller piece of the pie. The only way to make the pie bigger at this point is time is for the government to add more money into the pie without hard goods backing the money. Eventually what happens is that there is so much money for so few goods that significant price increases will occur due to low supply and high demand.

I know this is a simplistic analysis, I do not know if eventually is yesterday, today, tomorrow, 5 years or 10 years from now but it is inevitable.

Sunday’s Editorial Comics

All from Townhall.com

octuplets, clomid , In Vintro and The View TV show

Californian woman gives birth to octuplets

My wife told me she was flipping through the TV channels and stopped on the View today so that she could see Condolesea Rice being interviewed. My wife says she did very well.

Prior to this they 5 ladies of the view discussed the Octuplets born in California recently. There was some discussion about that some women go the “Cheap” way out and use Clomid because Health Insurance does not cover In Vitro fertilization like some European contries do. Part of this discussion can be seen on the view website but what could be considered the most controversial aspect of the conversation have been cut out of the web clip.

Sheri Shepherd made a comment that you should limit the amount of follicles that can be fertilized waiting until a small amount of follicles are present prior to have them fertilized and Elisabeth Hasselbeck said that a women who goes through this process does not want to miss any opportunity to become pregnant.

Why should an insurance company or anyone (government agency) else tell a woman how many babies she can have at once. If a women has control over her own body like the pro-abortion lobby, supports and preaches due to the privacy freedom that is in the Constitution based on Roe Vs Wade. How can a liberal pro-abortion person be against a different woman choosing a different path and having lots of babies?

If a pro-abortion person says a women has control of her reproduction in one instance why is that not the case all the time.

Maybe it is hypocritical and the pro-abortion lobby is not about a women having control over her own body after all.

Is the next step that when the liberals and socialist give us national health insurance that for our own good they will limit how many children a woman can have?

Could this be by Pelosi wanted to have birth control and more abortion funding in HR1 the “stimulus plan”?

The “almost” stimulus plan

I have been reading a lot about the close to $1 trillion dollar stimulus plan and the only conclusion I can come to is that the federal government is going to add about $1 trillion dollars to the national debt.

The basic of what America gets is to give a batch of IOUs to China and other countries or maybe they are IOUs between the FED and the Treasury. State and local governments which have been spending like there is no tomorrow the last 6 years due to the vast increase in tax revenues due to the ever growing economy now have no money since tax receipts are down due to the normal cyclical economic recessions which always occur. America’s politicians at every level of government in the kindest way I can say it are failures.

The Obama and the Congressional democrats plan are going to bail out the failed state and local governments who are doing just as bad a job as the federal government does when it comes to living within the countries means. This is a “stimulus” plan which will all the politicians at every level of government kick the problem down the road a few years and not have to make any difficult decisions on what programs should really be cut or eliminated.

I guess since the federal government is now rewarding failures in private businesses (mortgage underwriters (Freddie and Fannie, banks, insurance and auto companies) why not underwrite the state and local government failures. Some state and local governments (not all, but lots) are failing due to the federal government mandates which is just like the onerous regulations on the private companies which results in their failures.

Since the elected federal and unelected bureaucracies have caused a vast majority of the problems, I guess the federal government needs to cover their butts before the truth is really know.

The stimulus plan is really a list of who’s who in democratic party lobbyists and financial contributors as well as the state governors and local government leaders.

I say kill the plan, my wife and I will continue to pay our bills and live on what we make today, keep the $20 a week that will be the “stimulus” I see. The $20 a week will cost me up to $100 a week in extra state and local taxes and fees to pay for the matching funds which the state and local governments will have to raise in order to spend the federal government stimulus plan.

From Townhall.com

Smoke Cigarettes for Children’s health care – HR 2

We are paying for SCHIP with a cigarette tax increase. SCHIP will now cover families that have income up to 300% of the poverty level.

More about HR2 SCHIP increase here

The poverty level in 2007 for family of 4 with an income of $20,650. A family with income of $61,950 will have child health insurance. The 2006 median income in the US according to US census is $43000 to $52000 depending on region of the country. That means that more than 50% of the US population will have their children’s health insurance and health care paid for by the US taxpayer.

To pay for this plan the tax on a pack of cigarette is being raised 61 cents a pack.

Based on the Heritage foundations evaluation of the plan in 2007 that Bush vetoed 22 million more adults need to take up smoking to pay for this plan.

I now understand the socialist democrats plans, this plan will help fix social security.

Keep children healthy through SCHIP.
Get more adults to smoke cigarettes to pay for child health care.
As soon as the child is to old for SCHIP put a cigarette in their hand.
Adults die earlier due to smoking related illnesses.
Since adults are dying sooner there is less people collecting social social security.
Social security is now financially solvent for a few more years.
As a side benefit since the population is going down there are less people to use energy so America can become energy independent.
Since America is energy independent, Americas will stop contributing to man made global warming.
Less people means that fewer jobs are needed so unemployment will go down.

So remember, if you are to old for SCHIP do your patriotic duty and go smoke a pack of cigarettes, the results will make America better.

Judge Obama on Performance Alone

This is a link to a Juan Williams article in the Wall Street Journal. I have never been a great fan of Juan but sometimes the best comments come from the least expected places.

Judge Obama on Performance Alone

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If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else — fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism — then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.
Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.
This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.
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When fellow Democrats contending for the nomination rightly pointed to Mr. Obama’s thin proposals for dealing with terrorism and extricating the U.S. from Iraq, they were drowned out by loud if often vacuous shouts for change. Yet in the general election campaign and during the transition period, Mr. Obama steadily moved to his former opponents’ positions. In fact, he approached Bush-Cheney stands on immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperate in warrantless surveillance.
There is a dangerous trap being set here. The same media people invested in boosting a black man to the White House as a matter of history have set very high expectations for him. When he disappoints, as presidents and other human beings inevitably do, the backlash may be extreme.
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There is a lot more at stake now, and to allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.

President Obama deserves no less.

If what Juan Williams writes about comes true that it will prove that the liberal media is doing its job. If it is 4 years of fawning over the first black president then the media is demonstrating the prejudice and racism that a lot of conservatives believe exists in liberalism.

I agree with Juan that a lack of critical analysis of President Obama policies and the media continually challenging every decision he makes is a necessity, anything less does a disservice to America.

Truth in Media about Subprime failings

A very true editorial on IDB that takes the media bias to task.

The Subprime Lending Bias

Media: If, as they say, it’s journalists who write history’s first draft, then future texts will be riddled with errors about the origins of the subprime disaster, teaching future leaders the wrong lessons.

Read the entire article for a better understanding the media bias towards Republicans and especially Bush. Bush has given up his free market principles if he ever had any but the blatant omission of history by the media is a major part of the reason why American is in such long term trouble.

The big media want to be invited to all the right parties in DC and NYC so they can’t report truth since they would miss out on the parties and the illusion that they have power and are important.