Month: September 2011

News Flash: Economy is Really Lousy

Mark Noonan3 Comments

When the Ruling Class starts to admit it, you know we’re in a world of hurt – from the Washington Times:

Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors Sarah Bloom Raskin said today that unemployment numbers present too positive a view of the economy, adding that the Federal Reserve might need to take more action to stabilize the economy.

Nonetheless, as many families know,” said Raskin, an appointee of President Obama’s, “the headline unemployment numbers don’t fully capture the weakness in labor market conditions.”…

Later, though, she returned to Ruling Class type and asserted that she and the rest of the people running our economy are just wise, old owls and are carefully doing what needs to be done.  And, hey, if we hadn’t done all that money printing, it would have been worse!  She failed to explain how all the wisdom deployed so far has led to such a lousy economy.  You’d think that with a multi-trillion dollar price tag, we’d get more than a “it could have been worse” statement.

These people don’t really know what to do because they are working from a false theory – a theory that has it being consumption which makes the economy go ’round, rather than production.  It is the wealth we make which makes us rich, not the money we spend…especially not borrowed or printed money.  Until we start making money again (creating wealth via making, mining and growing things) we simply will not improve.  People like Ms. Raskin, I suspect, haven’t the foggiest notion of this.  How did the Chinese build up a couple trillion dollars of our money in their vaults?  Not by spending, but by making, mining and growing things.  Amazing that more people can’t see this (though being Ruling Class types, themselves, the Chinese leadership has also embarked upon a bonanza of printing and borrowing since 2008…and that will tip China in to recession in the by and by…even with their own example right in front of them, the Chinese leadership couldn’t see it).

Poll: People View Government Very Negatively

Mark Noonan68 Comments

Gallup finds us just disgusted with the whole thing:

  • 82% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.
  • 69% say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010.
  • 57% have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic problems, exceeding the previous high of 53% recorded in 2010 and well exceeding the 43% who have little or no confidence in the government to solve international problems.
  • 53% have little or no confidence in the men and women who seek or hold elected office.
  • Americans believe, on average, that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar,  similar to a year ago, but up significantly from 46 cents a decade ago and from an average 43 cents three decades ago.
  • 49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.

But what about Obama?  How’s he doing?  Gallup has him at 41% overall for the past month.  Not exactly what you would expect for The One who was going to make the oceans recede…wonder if anyone still thinks he’s what we were all waiting for?  I mean, other than himself?

Going to be a long, hard year for the Ruling Class in 2012…

 

230,000 Shovel Ready Jobs!

Mark Noonan12 Comments

If, that is, what you want is manure to be shoveled – from Hot Air:

The president has found a way to add jobs, after all — 230,000 of ‘em, all within the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the number of new bureaucrats the federal government will need to hire to implement new proposed greenhouse gas regulations…

The cost would be $21 billion a year for these extra bureaucrats.  And here’s the real kicker – they would be setting about the enforcement of greenhouse gas rules the EPA does not have statutory authority to enforce.  Cool, huh?  230,000 more government drones costing us more money and enforcing laws which are created not just at the whim of the President, but at the whim of any one of the 230,000 bureaucrats.  Liberal fascism is a wonderful thing, ain’t it?

Once again – 2012 will be a pivotal election.  We’ll decide, probably for good, whether America survives and thrives, or starts to die.

GAFFES MEAN THINGS* (*unless you’re a democrat)

Leo Pusateri14 Comments

Michele Bachmann today was reported as praising American achievements, such as the Intercontinental Railroad.

Of course, last time anyone checked in American history, there has never been, nor is there ever likely to be, an inter-continental railroad.

Unless they decide to build a trestle between New York City and London, England.

Of course, the media is likely to have a veritable field day with this latest Bachmann gaffe, and use it once again to showcase how utterly uncouth and ill-informed she is.

No wait. My bad. It wasn’t Bachmann who said that.

It was Barack Hussein Obama (hmm-hmm-hmm-pbuh).

Never mind.

Move along.

Nothing to see here.

ObamaCare to the Supreme Court

Mark Noonan20 Comments

From Politico:

The Obama administration chose not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a pivotal health reform case Monday, signaling that it’s going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether President Barack Obama’s health reform law is constitutional.

The move puts the Supreme Court in the difficult position of having to decide whether to take the highly politically charged case in the middle of the presidential election…

I can’t see how the individual mandate can be ruled constitutional…but, I guess we’ll see.  It’ll either wipe out Obama’s signature issue right in front of the 2012 election, or provide ammunition for Obama against those of us who argue it is unconstitutional.

Stay tuned.

Out and About on a Monday Morning

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Arab Spring Update:  93,000 Coptic Christians have left Egypt since the revolution.

Euro will be bailed out!!!

Err…maybe not.

A growing US/Russian/Turkish dispute over Cyprus?  I don’t like the idea that we’re going to base drones in Turkey, and I like it even less that we would be on the Turk’s side in a dispute over Cyprus.  In fact, if Russia ever wanted to induce me to want an alliance, a Russo-Turkish war would be a good way to do it.  Don’t trust the Turks, at all…an increasingly Islamist nation with historic designs not just in Syria, but also in places like Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus.  Yeah, can’t stand Putin either…but I can count on Great Russian nationalism in a war against the Turks.

Korea regulator says Korea’s banks are safe.  I’d pull my money out.  Just sayin’.

Introducing the Society to Preserve the Incandescent Light Bulb.  About time someone took a really firm stand against environmentalist idiocy.

Positivism, Ethics and Law: another look at the Troy Davis execution.

Dead men may tell no tales, but under Obamunism they can collect $120 million.

How labor unions work – so, your navy wants to fight bloodthirsty pirates?  Ok, say the unions, but we won’t refuel the ships at sea unless we make bank.  The German navy having labor troubles in their fleet tankers.

 

 

 

Susan B Anthony List Plans Pro-Life 2012 Ads

Mark Noonan6 Comments

From Hot Air:

Susan B. Anthony list, a pro-life advocacy group that last week released an ad dramatizing the obscene partnership between President Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood, aims to raise enough money to run the ad in key battleground states. To that end, they’re in the midst of a 72-hour campaign to come up with just $21,000 — so small a sum in comparison to the price of an Obama fundraiser.

As the ad depicts, the president’s support for Planned Parenthood runs deep. Even when states have legitimately — and through the proper legislative avenues — sought to defund the abortion provider, the administration has stepped in to override states’ decisions. Earlier this month, for example, after the Executive Council of New Jersey decided not to renew a $1.8 million contract with PP, the administration stepped in and awarded Planned Parenthood of New England more than $1 million in federal funding. Just days ago, the First Lady hosted a fundraiser with Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards and EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock…

Click on the link if you can donate – one thing we do know for certain is that the Obama Administration has been lock-step in favor of the Culture of Death.  If there has been a way to advance abortion, Obama has been right there.  And Obama is counting on a lot of pro-abortion money to help fund his 2012 campaign.  This is the best way to fight that – especially in pro-life States like Pennsylvania which Obama must win to be re-elected.

Exceptionally Appropriate Thought for the Day

Mark Noonan7 Comments

From the font of all good thoughts of the day:

Thus says the LORD:
You say, “The LORD’s way is not fair!”
Hear now, house of Israel:
Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies,
it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.
But if he turns from the wickedness he has committed,
he does what is right and just,
he shall preserve his life;
since he has turned away from all the sins that he has committed,
he shall surely live, he shall not die. – Ez. 18:25-28

All of us, I think, have our personal pile of iniquity to answer for – I certainly do.  Carrying it further, we as a nation have a pile of iniquity, as well.  But we can, at any moment, turn from them…and though our sins be as scarlet, we will be made white as snow.  As individuals and as a people, we can be better…much better.  So better that the resultant peace and justice will make the best times of the past seem a dark and wicked time.

I’m going to try.

We’re in a Heap of Trouble

Mark Noonan21 Comments

The end of the world as we know it, says Mark Steyn – and he captures a great deal of the problem in this quote:

…On Thursday night, there was a question on gays in the military but none on the accelerating European debt crisis. It is certainly important to establish whether a would-be president is sufficiently non-homophobic to authorize a crack team of lesbian paratroopers to rappel into the Chinese treasury, break the safe, and burn all our IOUs. But the curious complacency about the bigger questions is disturbing…

For many people, the seriousness of the situation really hasn’t hit home.  Oh, its growing, but it isn’t nearly where it needs to be.  Good people, we are an ace away from a complete, global meltdown…and such a meltdown which can easily lead to a world war.  The world economy is bankrupt and a corrupt Ruling Class doesn’t want to admit it, because admission means immediate replacement.  They are hoping we don’t notice until after the election.

But even more serious than that is the moral decline of our civilization…the fact that we’re not having children, we spend money on useless things, we allow immorality to run rampant.  All of that adds up to a civilization which wants to die.  We have to regain our moral compass and start demanding (beginning with the guy in the mirror, to be sure) that a higher standard is met.  If we don’t change it, we’ll be forced in to it anyway…no one is going to pay our way or do our work if we prove too weak to carry the ball. It is either walk out of this liberal blind alley we stumbled in to in 1933, or end America.