The American Spectator : Lew's Lewd Letter

"Obama Takes Charge at Hurricane Command Center" blared the AFP headline on Saturday. But it was just another disappointment for Obama. By the time the over-hyped hurricane Irene blew into town, there wasn't anything for Obama to take charge of.

It could have been a big psychological moment for Obama's campaign but it was just another let down for the man. The stock markets seemed to respond better to the East Coast earthquake last week than to Barry's recent speeches.

But Barry O'bama really has the luck of the Irish. With every sentient American worried about our still-sinking economy, we've been diverted from thinking about it all summer.

Gaddafi's fall, Irene's sweep of the not-so-earthquake-shattered East Coast, and now Dick Cheney's memoir have taken turns dominating the news. Maureen Dowd's review of Cheney's book seemed to say that last week's earthquake and the Irene minicane were the result of Voldemort-Cheney casting another evil spell on Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile Obama vacationed at Martha's Vineyard, contemplating how he would announce his new plan to revive the economy and restore confidence in the financial markets. The liberal media has been bewailing the fact that Obama has no announced theme for his 2012 campaign. One sluggo even moaned that the campaign website had not a single slogan on it. But there soon will be slogans aplenty because the post-vacation Big Speech has been hyped almost as much as Irene. Obama has a lot riding on it.

The problem he faces is that neither he nor anyone on his team can bring themselves to consider that reducing the size and scope of government is the only way to restore confidence in our economy among the financial markets, investors, and voters.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/29/lews-lewd-letter

Dangerous Disaffection - Henry Olsen - National Review Online

Dangerous Disaffection - Henry Olsen - National Review Online: "Reagan’s rhetoric always made the typical American feel valued and special. It did not emphasize the great entrepreneurs and captains of industry, although Reagan understood how setting them free would benefit America. Instead, he focused in speech after speech on ordinary people who did extraordinary things — the “boys of Pointe-du-Hoc,” the Lenny Skutnicks. It’s a rhetorical approach built on genuine sympathy for the average person.

His vision of a new Republican party included the educated and the uneducated, the working class as well as the upper class. He explained how working-class Democrats and independents could make common cause with traditional Republican supporters to forge a new majority founded on conservative principles, a strategy that carried him to a landslide.
That majority can be reconstructed. Blue-collar whites believe the president and the Democrats do not have their best interests at heart. They want to make common cause with conservatives to save our country. They just need to know that they will be safe on the Republican ship if they come aboard. "

The 10 Best Conservative Replacements For Glenn Beck’s Fox News Slot | NewsReal Blog

Since the announcement that Glenn Beck is leaving Fox News, conspiracy theories abound. We may never know the whole story or the details behind the split but what we can do is wildly speculate who is going to take his place. The most important thing Fox News president Roger Ailes should keep in mind is whoever takes Beck's time slot has to be someone who makes the Left put their full-blown moonbattery on display. It must be someone who pushes all the right buttons and enrages leftists, causing them to picket and boycott and all the other fun and hilarious things they do when confronted by conservative truth-tellers.
The thing I'll miss most about Beck being gone is the reaction from all the statist twerps who hate him with a frenzy that can only be compared to neurotic miniature poodles who pee on the carpet when overexcited. Ailes should focus like a laser on replacing Beck with only the most hated personality he can find. Not only will it keep the ratings up, but it will provide sane people with fantastic entertainment. The following are 10 suggestions for conservative hosts sure to make the Left angrier (and funnier) than they already are.

10. We Have Lesbians Too, Only Ours Are Prettier: Meet Tammy Bruce
Nothing infuriates the Left more than a traitor, and Tammy Bruce is a pretty big traitor. Bruce is a lesbian, a former NOW chapter president, and lifelong Democrat. Then she saw the light when she realized that individuals aren't welcome on the Left. Group-think is a requirement and Bruce isn't a team player. She's been one of the most popular conservative talk-show hosts and a best-selling author ever since. She loves to tweak the Left and isn't afraid to say unpopular things. Readers at the Huffington Post went bananas after she called Michelle Obama trash.

"That's what he's married to," Bruce said. "…You know what we've got? We've got trash in the White House. Trash is a thing that is colorblind, it can cross all eco-socionomic…categories. You can work on Wall Street, or you can work at the Wal-Mart. Trash, are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy…"

Just perusing the reader comments is a fun trip down the the progressive rabbit hole.

These are the kinds of people, however, that will encourage the upcoming slaughter of Republicans in the next election. In this way they are doing for the American people what Anita Bryant did for the gays- stir them to action. I look forward VERY MUCH to seeing far fewer Republican­s in the Congress and Senate after the next election. ~Johnny76

Those were delusional ramblings that Johnny76 wrote in 2009. In case you weren't aware, the election in 2010 ushered in a record number of Republicans and enough people to fill the mall in D.C. who also think the White House is full of trash.

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/04/11/10-best-replacements-for-glenn-beck-fox-slot/

Obama Puts Taxes on Table - WSJ.com

What he shows no awareness of is that it is people who have wealth who are the ones who invest it in business and thus create the jobs he says he wants.  By raising taxes on "the wealthy"--in fact the upper middle class--Obama's policies are anti-growth, anti-wealth, and hurt everyone, especially those at the bottom of the wage scale.  We need those investment dollars.  We need to know that we don't have a government that hates success, hates wealth, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice those who earn a lot for the benefit who live off the rest of us.

In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704366104576255282893680792.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

American Thinker: Progressive Fallacy Number 667: Wealth Redistribution Creates Societal 'Harmony'

Progressive preachers probably identify with Chinese President Hu Jintao's intention to reduce his citizenry's income gap in order to create a "harmonious society."  The Communist's sentiment saturates the politics of the Democratic Party.

Not to be outdone by Hu, British Prime Minister David Cameron recently complained that unequal societies rank low as measured by "almost every quality-of-life indicator."  Cameron didn't mention that the most unequal societies are the ones uglified by the most tyrannical elitists.  The tyranny, not the inequality, degrades quality of life.  In a society of laws, such as the United States, even the poor live more comfortably than almost everyone in oppressed societies.  The truth is that in prosperous cultures, when income gaps increase, high earners' wealth pours into technological innovations, which raise quality of life for all people.

But truth means little to redistributionists.  Class warfare gospel dominates most "when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" arguments.  Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett prescribes confiscatory inheritance taxes designed to humble the superwealthy.  French socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn wants "a new global growth model" because "gaping income gaps threaten social and economic stability."  Barack Obama demonized high earners and faulted America for having "the greatest income inequality since any time since the gilded age."  Progressives in general envision economic justice -- indeed, social justice -- through forced "fairness" lenses.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/progressive_fallacy_number_667.html

Why Does Business Support Both Political Parties?

I was recently asked by a friend to explain why men such as Jeffrey Immelt and other large corporations in the United States such as Goldman Sachs financially support both Democrats and Republicans, even as one party would seem to have the voters believe it supports businessmen and the other that it wishes to destroy them by taxing and regulating businessmen out of existence?

The facts my friend cites are not in dispute, and reflect the great depth of corruption in our current crony capitalist hybrid mixed economy.  One could understand why a corporation might support Republicans, but why would Goldman Sachs support the liberal and socialist program of the Democrats, a program whose seeming goal would lead only to its destruction?

The facts demonstrate the insight made by many who run our largest industries that:  1) the US government is a legalized criminal organization seeking "bribes" in the form of political contributions in exchange for certain "protections" from government regulatory, anti-trust, and taxing thuggery, and, 2) both major political parties are completely and irredeemably corrupt so the smart move is always to support both in case one or the other is able for the moment to delude enough voters to support its candidates.

It is true, not all businesses, not even all large businesses necessarily subscribe to this view of our government, but whether or not it represents their conscious views, it nonetheless offers a good theory why such businesses financially support politicians otherwise dedicated to their apparent destruction.  After all, when was the last time you heard a socialist, a Democrat, or even a Republican for that matter, defend businessmen?

Ayn Rand had some interesting things to say in a lecture given in 1962:

"Businessmen [her italics] are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world.  All the other social groups--workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers--exist under dictatorship, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction.  But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship.  Their place is taken by armed thugs:  by bureaucrats and commissars.  businessmen are the symbol of a free society--the symbol of America.  If and when they perish, civilization will perish.  But if you wish to fight for freedom, you must begin by fighting for its unrewarded, unrecognized, unacknowledged, yet best representatives--the American businessman."

Much has happened since 1962 when Ayn Rand said those words, and while Soviet communism has imploded and Red China has permitted a great deal of economic freedom for its citizens, we are now seeing on an unprecedented scale the slow, seemingly inexorable slide in the United States to a situation where leading businessmen such as Jeffrey Immelt of GE have now definitely moved into that twilight zone where the shift to the Dark Side becomes inevitable. 

 

Immelt is part businessman but now he is more of a commissar, a government thug pretending he is the CEO of a private corporation.  Immelt is not kept in corporate power because he has worked for the interests of the corporation--its stock has declined the entire period of his leadership--but because of his willingness to do the bidding of the federal government, in the present case, of President Barack Obama and the President's liberal allies on Capital Hill, all of whom are not necessarily liberal or Democrats.

Such men as Immelt have conceded the moral high ground to the socialists--that the good consists in sacrificing one's self, one's interests, for the "higher" good of society, whose voice is given expression by whichever gang of thugs is able to seize political power in the society at a given time.  Immelt and the others like him in the twilight are perfectly willing to play the game the socialists and liberals have invented and have become the willing milch cows of the corporate welfare state that we now have.

The socialist Democrats do not want to destroy businessmen, they want schmoos--businessmen who take delight in being devoured by the state.  Ultimately the schmoo is eaten alive, but the process can take quite a while and socialists have never been too concerned about the future anyway so long as they are able feed on the living body today.  They demonstrably have no problem mortgaging the future of the country, either, in order to continue feeding their social welfare programs, incidentally keeping themselves in power.

So Immelt and gang--the heads of Goldman Sachs for intance--understand the new rules and since they have already conceded they have no right to exist, that they have no rights as individual and exist merely on the sufferance of government, on "society's" need for their productive abilities, they will be permitted to keep some of their earnings, and, indeed, will be permitted to keep more of their earnings to induce other businessmen not willing to make schmoos of themselves, to alter their views and willingly surrender their interests and productivity to the service of state without a fight.

The picture is gruesome, a farce of unimaginable proportions.

And there is only one way to end it:  by rejecting the moral premise of the entire system that the good consists in the sacrifice of self to the interests of the collective.  It consists in the recognition and insight that the true good of everyone can never be advanced through the sacrifice of the individual, that society is, first and foremost, a collection of individuals, and that individuals have the moral right to exist, which means:  they have the right to the products of their own labor, intelligence, and talent.

Capitalism Magazine - Shutdown

As usual, right on the money:

The current Congress faces the same risk. While it's important to cut programs and prove you're willing to do so, fiscal discipline is not the overriding purpose. Nancy Pelosi and fellow liberals are already arguing back that cutting government programs will result in the loss of jobs.
In some cases, this may actually be true, since government programs do require jobs and pay salaries. What's the Republican reply to this? It should be: "So what? Government has stolen that money from the private, productive sector. Instead of creating productive jobs in productive businesses that people want, government is taxing people to create jobs for political cronies and pressure groups."
If your sense of purpose stems from the value of individual rights, capitalism and limited government, you can make this argument. If your central purpose is nothing more than "fiscal discipline" and balancing the budget, you cannot.

Capitalism Magazine - Shutdown

Deny Collective Bargaining Rights?

Is the Wisconsin deal basically about denying workers collective bargaining rights?

The Governor and legislature could certainly just accept the public sector union's position, that of a willingness to accept a very modest rollback for the current year.

While doing that might solve the immediate problem for the current year, it would not solve the problem created by the unbalanced situation that exists where one side has most of the power, i.e. the public sector unions, that can basically hold the state hostage to whatever it is they want in the long term.

No level of government can make a budget if the unions can call in an outside negotiator and then demand this and that and the political subdivisions must accept the demand.

The proposal on the desk is to limit the power of public sector unions to negotiate certain things--not wages--as well as requiring that unions undergo re-certification each year, meaning workers would have the opportunity to choose whether to continue paying in huge union fees, which are now collected by the state using force--no choice is allowed, and worker's union dues then go to support Democrats and union bosses.

Make no mistake, a change such as is proposed will put an effective end to the corrupt system we have in so many states and that has led them to bankruptcy. Democrats who derive their main support from forced union dues will suffer. But that, in my opinion, is a good thing.

Workers in any case are protected by Wisconsin's civil service laws--the strongest in the country.

If the unions win this contest, then the Governor will have no choice but to begin firing public sector workers to make up the shortfall. The unions are on record as having no problem with firings. The Governor, however, does have a problem with firing state workers. Let's not forget, the state is facing financial catastrophe. Either we get a budget or we fire workers. That is the choice, unless we have reforms.

I should hasten to add, despite all the Democrat and liberal propaganda, the proposal does not address itself to private sector unions. We are talking about reforming a deeply corrupt system so that taxpayers will be put back in charge of spending. It's as simple as that.

Abolish Public Sector Unions

There can be no justification for public employees to be in unions, since the employer is the government, not a private business. Government employees have no right to strike against the public, since the public has no alternative to the government. It's not as if the public has an alternative government to provide the services required.

More than this, we have a hugely corrupt system where unions, as in Wisconsin, have the government collect union dues from each employee and then the state funnels those huge amounts of money to the union bosses who then, in turn, support Democratic politicians. Those same politicians then offer cushy benefits to the unions in exchange for union political support. It is an unholy alliance between Democrats and public sector unions that cannot be economically sustained.

It amounts to nothing less than financial rape of the public and the taxpayers, and the public has voted, overwhelmingly in Wisconsin, to make a fundamental reform of this corrupt system which can only lead to economic catastrophe for the state.

In the elections of 2010, we had a vote. In Wisconsin, the voters elected the Republicans to do what they are doing, and the votes expect them to perform and get the system in order.

This is a movement toward fiscal responsibility that is occurring in other states as well, such as Ohio, where there is legislation that essentially outlaws public sector unions.

Public sector unions are an abomination and a threat to our democratic institutions, a point well understood by George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO, and FDR himself, who opposed public sector unions. All responsible public officials should oppose public sector unions for the reasons stated.

The only way we shall have fundamental change in this country is by eliminating the long-term threat to our political and economic institutions by abolishing, or severely reigning in, the monopolistic power of public sector unions.

Even the voters of Wisconsin understand this, finally. Those in California apparently do not and will suffer accordingly.

And what about all those 14 Democrats who have abandoned their jobs to represent the people in their districts in Wisconsin? They have a moral and legal obligation to come back to the legislature and vote.

They will lose, but as President Obama has said over legislation he has favored: "We won the election." Precisely. In Wisconsin, the Republicans won, overwhelmingly. In 2012, the voters will get another chance to change their opinion, if that's what they want to do.

The Republicans will win, if they actually do what they've promised to do. Governor Walker is doing exactly what he said he would do. No surprise there, and the public supports him.

Capitalism Magazine - Oprah and Obama

Of course Obama has a hard job. He's trying to do the impossible -- and the immoral. He's trying to turn America's semi-socialist/semi-capitalist democracy into a mostly or totally socialist nation. In his first two years in his office, he went about this as decisively and calmly as anyone in American history has ever done. By the standards of expanding socialism in the United States, Obama has been quite competent. This is precisely why his opponents oppose him. Oprah is either too stupid or too evasive to respond to the real reason that so many Americans don't like Obama: They resent, or even despise, his ideas and his policies. To speak in the language of Oprah: Oprah doesn't get it.
Oprah is doing what liberal partisans typically do. They bypass ideological issues and respond with personal ones. Oprah relies on people assuming that both parties are more or less the same, and that you get more or less the same thing when either one is in office -- so it's merely a matter of personality, style, competence and patience.
Sadly, this is all too true. Republicans have been expanders of and tax collectors for the welfare state no less than the Democrats, for many decades now. But none of this changes the fact that widespread opposition to Obama has come from people who oppose conventional Republicans just as much, for their enabling of the massive socialist, authoritarian democracy America has slowly become.

Capitalism Magazine - Oprah and Obama

Arvada Police arrest 11-year-old over 'inappropriate' stick figure drawing - KDVR

The parents were outraged, I am outraged, and every decent human being should be outraged at this sort of totalitarian mindset that has been engendered by political correctness--specifically Left Wing Progressivist attack on free speech, and the equation of speech with behavior. This is no different than that the sort of irrational nonsense that began on elite college campuses with "speech codes" and has filtered throughout higher education and enforced by Left-wing college professors and administrators. When one speaks of the fascism of the Left, this is precisely the sort of thing we are talking about.

One sees the phenomenon all throughout the culture. Recently, for example, we have the left-wing conventional mainstream media report favorably on the union thugs demonstrating in Madison Wisconsin carrying signs attacking the Republican Governor Walter as "Hitler" yet the media says nothing about that, even though such vicious signs are quite prevalent. Had the demonstration been a Tea Party affair, something the media loathes, then you can be sure the Madison demonstration would not be represented favorably, but as a riot of "racist right-wing vigilantes". I hope you see what is obvious to me, the complete double standards of the news media. If the media favor the demonstration, it's all sweetness and light. If they don't, then the demonstrators are racists.

It's interesting to note how the media liked to point out there were so few blacks among the Tea Party demonstrators, but said absolutely nothing about the fact that there were hardly any black people in the Madison union demonstrations.

Another egregious example of bias, corruption, and dishonesty in the national news media. The only news organizations that fairly reported the demonstrations was FoxNews, so oftentimes attacked by the left-wing zealots who call it "FauxNews." It's clear to me and to any fair-minded person that the only news organization that still reports news rather than straight propaganda is Fox News.

Did you notice the difference in how CNN reported how doctors who are committing fraud by excusing teachers on sick leave are reported as just doing a nice favor, when in fact, the doctors are helping the teachers commit fraud? Only FoxNews reported this story accurately in this contest between the people on the one side, who just hired their new Governor, doing what he was elected to do, and these left-wing public sector union thugs whose only object is to keep getting union dues to support their power and influence in the Democratic Party?

Arvada Police arrest 11-year-old over 'inappropriate' stick figure drawing - KDVR

The American Spectator : Caplan's Constitution

"Far from being an obstacle to solving our economic problems, fidelity to the Constitution would have prevented many of them. If the federal government operated within constitutional constraints, we would not stand on the brink of national bankruptcy. Our currency would not be debased. The federal government would not be inflating real estate or investment bubbles. Taxes would be much lower yet there would not be deficits as far as the eye can see."
The American Spectator : Caplan's Constitution

The Great Sweep of 2010 - Michael Barone - National Review Online

GENTRY LIBERALS: The tsunami swept from the George Washington Bridge to the Donner Pass, but didn’t wash away affluent liberals to the east and west of these geographic markers. Also surviving were the cannibals — the public-employee unions that are threatening to bankrupt states such as California and New York, a prospect that doesn’t faze the left-leaning gentry.
In these areas, Republicans picked up one House seat anchored in Staten Island, two in New Hampshire, and one in Washington State, and they came close in two California districts wholly or partly in the Central Valley. Gentry-liberal territory stayed staunchly Democratic.

The Great Sweep of 2010 - Michael Barone - National Review Online

Thoughtless Taxation | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Many Democrats, including many lame ducks, are still demanding that tax rates for entrepreneurs be increased under the absurd claim that not to do so will "cost" the government "almost $2 trillion over the 2011-20 period" in lost tax revenues.

To believe these bogus numbers that the Joint Tax Committee staff and the administration put out about the revenue loss, one needs to believe that upper-income people will not alter their behavior when faced with higher tax rates, that high marginal tax rates on capital (the seed corn of the economy) and double taxation of it do not damage economic growth and job creation, and that the government is smaller than its optimum size to maximize the general welfare.

The empirical evidence as well as good economic theory demonstrate that none of the above is true — but to those politicians, mainstream media sorts and left-wing economists who cannot understand the difference between variables and constants, facts don't matter.

Thoughtless Taxation | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

American Thinker: The Wrong Track Election

The hills are alive with the sound of liberal Democratic contempt for the electorate. So are the valleys, the prairies, and the coasts. For months, voters have been signaling their discontent with the president, his party, and their priorities; tomorrow, they appear poised to deliver a stinging rebuke. Yet rather than address the voters' concerns with seriousness and respect, too many Democrats and their allies on the left have chosen instead to slur those voters as stupid, extremist, or too scared to think straight.
American Thinker: The Wrong Track Election

American Thinker: At the End of the Liberal Dynasty

In the Juan Williams affair, they are telling us that liberal journalists have to take a vow, as members of the exclusive NPR Vegan Club, never to be caught grabbing a salty snack at the Fox News Drive-In window. Is that what liberalism is reduced to?

American Thinker: At the End of the Liberal Dynasty

American Thinker: A Mass Nervous Breakdown of the Left

The left can be mean, vicious, and deceitful. I've recently concluded, however, that the left is having, before our eyes, a mass nervous breakdown at the prospects of its collapse, exacerbated by the lost prospect of being on the verge of something really big. They thought they had won. Now, they're seeing it all crumble in a mountain of unsustainable debt, a loss of freedom, and an awakening of voter awareness of who's and what's at fault.

American Thinker: A Mass Nervous Breakdown of the Left

The President vs. the Public - Rich Lowry - National Review Online

They got a 1,073-page stimulus bill, a 2,409-page health-care bill, and a 2,319-page financial-reform bill passed. That’s 5,801 pages in just three pieces of legislation, at a very conservative cumulative estimated cost of $1.9 trillion over ten years. If this is what Obama’s broken Washington produces in three bills, what would a functioning one do?
For all their reputation as obstructionists, Republicans weren’t able to stop any of this. Unlike in the early Clinton years, Republicans aren’t benefiting from obstructionism so much as from failing to block a president’s deeply unpopular priorities. Washington worked for Obama — and now he’s paying the price.

The President vs. the Public - Rich Lowry - National Review Online

American Thinker: The Democrats Will Steal the Election if We Let Them

A number of comments on my recent pieces dealing with electoral issues (particularly "The American Left Slides Into Psychosis") have mentioned the importance of protecting the vote to assure that standard corrupt Democratic tactics are not allowed to lessen the weight of the impending November avalanche. This is certainly a valid point in this age, when Stuart Smalley has found his way from the tube to the Senate and the Black Panthers have been resurrected from their status as footnote to the '60s to serve as enforcers for humane, progressive liberalism. It will serve us well to take a close look at the Democrat record in this matter, consider what they may be up to regarding this election, and, the most serious question of all, ask why the GOP lets them get away with it.

American Thinker: The Democrats Will Steal the Election if We Let Them

Your Pre-Election Post-Mortem - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

Conventional wisdom is that the election is being driven by anger and blind anti-incumbent fervor. Nonsense. Overwhelmingly, it is Democratic incumbents, not Republicans, who are under siege. This is a national revolt against the Democratic governance of the last two years.
Your Pre-Election Post-Mortem - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online