This story is a few weeks old, but I am inspired to write about it anyhow. On the December 7 edition of Meet The Press, Tom Brokaw was pressing President-elect Barack Obama on whether or not he had quit smoking and if he would smoke cigarettes in the White House. He finally got Obama to “admit” that although he is trying to quite smoking, he still has the occasional cigarette. He also vowed not to violate the “smoke free” policy that the White House has had since the Clinton administration.
Here is an article with a video clip of the discussion:
Really? Really?!?! Is this what we should care about? Let me make a deal with with Mr. Obama. How about we let the president of the United States decide if, when, and where he wants to smoke a cigarette. How about we get him to take a vow on the following issues:
There are some in the media who seem to think that the smoking issue is trivial. Here is a Slate.com article expressing that sentiment (Warning — if Messianic hero worship of Obama by the media makes you nauseous, then you are strongly urged not to click on this link!):
Fawning article by love struck member of the liberal media
You know, my opinion of Barack Obama would increase substantially if he would look us square in the eye and say, “I am a 47 year old man. I will decide for myself if I want to smoke.” As the horrified news reporter tries valiantly to fight back the tears, his lips will quiver ever so slightly as he stammers out the follow up question: “What kind of a message does that send to our children?”
Jackpot! This question is the hanging curve ball that President-elect Obama can hit out of the ballpark! He could say, “The message it sends is that adults are allowed to do many things that children are not allowed to do. Just because an adult smokes cigarettes does not mean that children are also allowed to do it.” Boy, oh boy! If he said something like that, I might even fall in love with the man!
It will never happen, of course, because the public health and safety Nazis plan to use these issues to amass more power to government. The incoming administration will be peppered with people to can’t wait to use the tax code to mold and shape the way we live our lives. None more so than the chief executive himself.
The fact of the matter is there are lots of things that adults are allowed to do that we do not let children do. Here is a partial list:
Sometime between my childhood and today, our society has adopted the attitude that parents do not have the moral authority to tell children not to do something if they do it themselves. Let’s all grow up and stop worrying about stupid stuff (like whether or not the president smokes) and concentrate on important stuff (like preventing a radical transformation of this country toward socialism and a weakening of its ability to defend itself).
First of all, Merry Christmas to all, and a happy and PROSPEROUS new year!
We live in a time of economic self determination. That may not last much longer if the government continues to jump in to rescue companies. What am I talking about Virginia? Let me explain…
The government takes money in, spends it, and borrows again future income if the gap is not positive. The value of our money and the health of our economy is led by how much money we borrow versus how much money we take in. When we are spending a lot more than we are taking in, the value of our economy is compromised, so the dollar drops in value internationally. Since our country is so well integrated in the world stage, that means that the price of all those goods and services we get from other countries goes up. We have been borrowing an awful lot lately, meaning that that our cost of goods from ther countries has jumped accordingly, and that becomes a large part of the high cost of oil, food, and products that we had prior to the meltdown in October. Since the economic meltdown was global, the value of the dollar has risen significantly. That’s one of the economic indicators that we need to preserve. How, you ask, Virginia? Well, that’s easy: spend less on frivolous crap, win the wars, and plan for the future.
Another leading economic indicator that is mostly self prophecy is consumer confidence. Right now it’s at a historical low due to the meltdown and the lack of confidence in our democratic institutions. It’s a sad day when the best run country in the world lacks confidence in itself. When self defeatism leads over American might. When, as Jimmy Carter put it in the 70s, the country has a crisis of confidence. Why is that? Because the media worked hard at creating a bleak scenario of a growing economy for three years JUST to get rid of Republicans. The democrats back in ‘06 ran, with the backing of the media, on a bleak economic picture when they knew full well that the economy was sound. Now that they are in charge, it will be interesting to see if the media will help them recover that confidence. I highly doubt it, as they are mostly dogs of misery. So, another leading economic indicator that needs to come up is consumer confidence.
Just a few months ago, the liberal media was touting Al Gore’s watermellon (green on the outside, red on the inside) environmental policies. They claimed peak oil had been reached several years ago, and doom and gloom would occur by 2010 if we did not act. They said that $140/barrell oil was due supply dwindling and that the end of our carbon based energy was near. Folks, that was just five months ago. I wrote on this blog then, as I maintain today, that they majority of that price was due to speculation of people in Wall Street that don’t know squat about the oil industry, coupled with the high cost of a cheap dollar. You might want to go back and read it. Well, $34/barrel oil is here today. It will go further down a bit but will settle at north of $40 for the mid term. Those people that wanted to throw it all away on a whim now have not idea how to push the red agenda that green policies bring, as they are no longer economically viable. You can’t scare people about the price of gas when they are paying $1.27 a gallon of gas, like I just did. We are also seeing that since the cost of transportation has dropped, the cost of goods is dropping. This is creating deflation, which is significantly more dangerous than inflation. We need to turn that back around to a low level of controlled inflation. That’s another leading economic indicator that needs to come up.
The media is watching housing starts as if our life depended on it. It does not. What they should be watching is the lending rate among financial institutions. That’s the prime indicator of the availability of credit. If that does not come up, we are S.O.L. The fed has no more points to give, only money, and that process costs a fortune. Let’s hope and pray that the big boys in the financial institutions don’t take the money the government gave them just to acquire other instutions, but also to lend to the public and to corporate America. Availability of credit is another leading economic indicator that needs to go up.
Lastly, but most critical, are the unemployment numbers and corporate inventory levels. Let me explain why. Until the 80s, corporate America was faithful to its workforce, and layoffs only occured when the company was going down the tubes. In the early 90s, corporate America discovered that you can optimize your workforce by using layoffs at all times. The promise of a potential re-hire kept government off their backs when it came to getting rid of people, and the whore mongers in wall street loved it so much that it became a standard practice as opposed to an emergency tool. So, when companies start to see their profit margins declining due to the slowdown, the first thing they will resort to is layoffs. When people are unemployed, they can’t spend, which means that they don’t buy as many goods. When they dont buy as many goods, companies that make those goods have too much inventory, and they lay off workers until those inventories dissapear and they need to produce goods again. This becomes a vicious self destruction cycle that is only broken with artificial incentives that take months to take effect. Those incentives typically come in the form of spending incentives thru tax cuts that enable the other folks (employed) to spend. We could easily diminish that cycle by asking corporation (not forcing) to not lay people off unless they have to do it in order to survive. The more money that is pumped into the economy in extraordinary spending, the quicker the recovery, and the quicker we can all go back to whining about our football teams, not our livelyhood. So, the last two economic indicators that I want to go up as my Christmas present are employment and the lowering of inventory levels.
So there Santa, I know I’m asking for this the day after the celebration of the birth of our Lord, but i figure my request was so big, it would take all of your attention, and since I have been a really good boy, you would have to work on it. So, please, all I want for Christmas is for those leading economic indicators to come up positive….
Merry Christmas to all of you, and the happiest and most prosperous 2009.
Vice-President-elect Joe Biden has been named to chair a “middle class task force”. The purpose of this task force will be to review administration policies and how they are affecting the middle class. Biden says:
“It is designed to do the one thing we use as a yardstick of economic success of our administration: Is the middle class growing? Is the middle class getting better? Is the middle class no longer being left behind?”
Is a growing middle class a sign of a successful economy? The answer to that depends on how the middle class is growing. For example, if poor people are getting more opportunities and enriching themselves so that they enter the middle class, then that is certainly a good situation. However, if wealthy people are losing their fortunes and, thus, sliding back into the middle class, then that is not the sort of “growth” that should be applauded.
When the new administration and the heavily Democrat congress take charge next year, their policies will have the latter effect. There will surely be many factors that will hinder the recovery of the U. S. economy. Two of the primary causes will be 1) a new tax structure which will have the government taking an immorally high percentage of citizens’ money, and 2) an agenda of watermelon policies that will destroy the economy with ridiculous environmental regulations whose stated purpose is to prevent “climate change”.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term “watermelon”, it refers to the real agenda of activists and politicians who embrace the radical environmental movement. A watermelon, as we all know is green when we look at it from the outside. But once you cut into it, you can see that it is red on the inside. Therefore, watermelon policies are green (”save the environment”) on the outside but they are really red (”socialist”) on the inside.
Therefore, the Obama administration will indeed grow the middle class with its policies. And, by their own yardstick, will declare themselves to be a success. However, the poor will not benefit from this. As a matter of fact, we will all suffer as the middle class grows due to the shrinking wealth of the most successful entrepreneurs in the nation. Those same policies will also discourage new entrepreneurs from risking their capital. Why should they take the risk when the government will just come in a take a greater share of their success?
Back in May, we wrote in this blog (The myth of the Big Bad Oil Company (BBOC) and the reality of speculative oil pricing.) that the price of oil (at $112 then) was mis-inflated by as much as 60-70%. I received some really rude comments from anti-energy people talking about how the end of the energy world was coming and that we had to jump into a different world immediately, damn the torpedoes.
The price of oil today is below $34. IT IS NOT going to stay there. It will drop a bit more, coming up in the 1st quarter. I think that for ‘09, we will see oil settle between $40 and $70 and stay there until the idiots get involved in pricing again.
The pendulum swings. It always does. You are going to see the idiots always scream, call you names, and then disappear when they are proven wrong.
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This is from my friend Mike:
I’m sure we have all seen the smirking news reporters as they told us of the idiot who threw his shoes at President Bush in Iraq the other day. But I wonder if any of them bothered to report the obvious irony in this whole incident? I haven’t seen it.
This “brave” Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at the podium while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his invited guest, President Bush, were standing there. Has anyone bothered to mention what would have happened if this person had done that while the previous leader of Iraq was standing there with an invited guest?
This man wanted to express his disdain and anger at George W. Bush. Has he ever taken such action against a true tyrant? Did he ever throw a shoe at Saddam Hussein? How about President Mubarak of Egypt? Or Bashar al-Assad of Syria?
The irony, of course, is that this moron was throwing his shoes at the man who made it possible for him to feel free enough to express himself like that without risking his life! Say what you want about the Iraq War (right or wrong), but there is no denying that statement.
This is from my friend Mike:
I have always liked the song “Bodies” by the group Drowning Pool. However, I will listen to it now with a renewed appreciation. I will also make it a point to buy their CDs whenever I have a chance.
I always try to stress to my children (and any adults who will listen) that entertainers may create good music and/or movies but they usually do not know what they are talking about when it come to their political views.
This article describes how a group of musicians are whining about their music is being used to aid in the interrogation of terrorist suspects.
http://www.startribune.com/world/35818184.html?page=3&c=y
It’s too bad that more of these people (who prosper under the banner of freedom this country provides) don’t have the perspective that Stevie Benton has. On page 3 of this article we read:
Some musicians, however, say they’re proud that their music is used in interrogations. Those include bassist Stevie Benton, whose group Drowning Pool has performed in Iraq and recorded one of the interrogators’ favorites, “Bodies.”
“People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down,” he told Spin magazine. “I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”
With our new president promising to shut down Gitmo, I suppose we can look forward to these terrorists scum either coming to the U. S. mainland (and most likely getting their own taxpayer funded ACLU lawyers) or being released back out into the wild to kill again.
We can surely look forward to some newly appointed federal judges dismissing their cases and setting them free. They will invoke the clause in the constitution that states that enemy combatants have a right not to listen to music during their detainment.
There are lots of scum in the world, which includes many women. One of those is Governor corrupt’s wife Patricia Blagojevich is true scum amongst scum. She is truly at the bottom. For example, here is a quote from FoxNews:
“F— them,” Patricia Blagojevich is quoted as saying, according to the affidavit. In an apparent reference to the Tribune Company’s attempts to sell Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs, she urges the two engaged in the phone call to “hold up that f—ing Cubs s—.”
Nice girl. Not.
Perhaps she is because she is the daughter of a Chicago alderman, the famed cogs of the Chicago Democrat political machine, or perhaps because she is the wife of Governor corrupt, but wow, what scum. There are dozens of example of her lowness, but that is a great example.
At least there are not allegations of sexual misconduct with her (at least yet), like there was with another famed Illinois politician and many of the other scumbag females.
If you have not heard the details of what is happening in Illinois right now with Governor Corrupt, then you must be living under a rock. I’m not here to write about that. The guy is as guilty as Judas and he is part of the fabric that makes the Democrat machine in Chicago what it is. I just want to remind you all that this is the political crib for our newly elected President elect. And to remind you that the Mayor Corrupt Richard Daley, who was responsible for the recreation of the machine, is a very important stakeholder in the Obama circle of influence, holding an awesome power as he led the cabinet selection committee for BHO.
There is a fantastic article in the Chicago Tribune about what is happening right now from John Kass (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-10-dec10,0,7674669.column) that I recommend that everyone read. Here are a couple of excerpts:
Even national pundits with tingles running up their legs can’t ignore the tape recordings in which Blagojevich speculated how he’d get the gold for picking Obama’s successor.”
I’m not saying that Obama was involved with this specific allegation. I’m just pointing out that this is where he grew up politically. God please help us.
Chicagoans are so lost in their corrupt government that corruption is no longer a negative when voting. The machine in Chicago is not unlike what Chavez is trying to build in Venezuela. Even with his low popularity rating, sitting at 4% as of last week (prior to his arrest), he was thinking about running for president in 2016. I’n not kidding. That’s the Obama lesson. You can teflon yourself out of any sticky situation if the media will let you.
I just hope and pray that Americans with Obama will be less forgiving and more watchful than Chicagoans were…