Author: Mark Noonan

$71,600 to be With Obama

Mark Noonan7 Comments

From Newsmax:

The parties just keep coming for birthday-boy Barack Obama. After a Chicago fund-raiser the night before he turned 50 and a White House party on the big ay, a third event is now planned for New York.This time it is high-powered movie mogul Harvey Weinstein who will host the
president at his Big Apple home, reports the New York Post.

And despite being described as “a small dinner and discussion” on the invitation, it will raise $2 million for the president’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. According to the NYP, the cost per couple to chow down is $71,600…

Yeah, that is real “man of the people” stuff, huh?  Glad that Obama understands what we’re going through… I mean, what says “average American” more than plunking down 71 grand on dinner?  Don’t we all do that ever day?  Well, I guess we might if Bernanke goes on another printing spree and our currency completely collapses…

This man Obama is so entirely out of touch with the American people.  He doesn’t even need to raise this much money…everyone knows who he is; its not like he has to introduce himself to the American people.  But, when you’re in the Ruling Class, I guess you need these sorts of affairs…makes you feel special.  Connected.  In charge.  Able to blow money like no tomorrow…

S&P Downgrades USA

Mark Noonan29 Comments

From the Washington Post:

Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, dealing a symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system.

Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said “political brinkmanship” in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances “less stable, less effective and less predictable.” It said the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings “fell short” of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings in the future…

Conveniently done after the markets close in order to avoid a crash…and remember why we’re here:  because Obama and his Democrats tacked on an additional trillion a year in spending and didn’t want to give any of it up.  Just a couple hundred billion dollar cut next year – which would have had us still spending hundreds of billions more than in 2008 – would have done the trick.  It would have showed that we have the political will, right now, to deal with the debt.  But, nothing doing from Obama…he has to keep the money flowing to his special interest groups no matter what.

2012 can’t get here fast enough.

 

Wisconsin State Fair Incident

Mark Noonan71 Comments

JS Online has an excellent, detailed report of what happened.  To nutshell it, for reasons unknown a large group of black youths went on a rampage at the State Fair, appearing to single out whites for attack.  This event took place in Wisconsin, a State noted for its liberal efforts at “diversity” (in fact, the State Fair, itself, has been taking great pains to be be more “diverse”), with only a relatively small black community (a bit more than 6% of the population) and no history of racially motivated attacks.  So, why did it happen?

Because we told these kids to do it.  Yes – you, me; all of us.  For more than a generation we have poured filth in to the mind of youth…pornography, violence, glorified gangsters, racialist divisions created by politicians on the make, go ahead and fornicate we’ll get you an abortion, ignorance disguised by self-esteem training, lack of respect for law and tradition.  We’ve shoved this relentlessly in to the youth of our nation…and now we’re going to get all shocked that some of them went on a rampage. I’m not – I’m expecting more of this, and for it to get worse.  We’re supposed to take our youth and civilize it…instead, what we’ve done is barbarize it.  And there is a thing about barbarians – they act barbarically.

It is going to be difficult to deal with this.  It might get so bad that only the crudest and cruelest force will make the most incorrigible in to responsible citizens.  But however we deal with it, this will be a protracted and difficult process.  The cure for it will be found in protecting the current crop of little kids from the filth.  We have to stand up and start acting like adults – start insisting that “free speech” does not include making profits off of selling pornography and violence to kids; start insisting that kids learn in school, not learn to merely think highly of themselves; start teaching kids to respect law and tradition.

Or we can ignore our duty and allow more and worse things to happen.  It will.  You can rely on it.  This was just some kids out on a rampage.  But eventually they or their successors will kill…they will become the tools of those who want to use violence to get what they want, whether it is mafia-like criminals, or budding tyrants who want to destroy our republic.  We have it in our power to call a halt to this and restore decency in our nation…and ensure that the next generation of young people will not do such things as this.

Nader: There Will be an Obama Primary Challenger

Mark Noonan39 Comments

From The Daily Caller:

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty.

“What [Obama] did this week is just going to energize that effort,” Nader promised in an interview with The Daily Caller. “I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent.”

The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either “an ex-senator or an ex-governor” or “an intellectual leader or an environmental leader.”…

While one must never forget the way Nader helped fasten upon the American people the greedy and corrupt tribe of trial lawyers, you do have to hand it to him on his convictions:  he’s a pinko right down to the ground, and Obama hasn’t been commie enough for him.  Which, once again, does make you wonder just how ultra-leftist Obama would have to be to please people like Nader.  At all events, it appears that anger over Obama’s failures on the left side are starting to bite.

While there was some lip service on the left about Afghanistan being a “good” war, the reality is that the left dislikes any use of American power…so, the fact that we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan and have also launched a war in Libya has to be causing problems.  In addition to this, Obama has kept in place almost all of the Bush anti-terrorism policies…this is simple common sense on the part of Obama, but our leftists talked themselves in to really believing that Gitmo was a horror and that the Patriot Act was undermining American liberty.  To keep the American Gulag open has to be a shock to the left…and a source of anger the longer it stays open (here’s a clue for you liberals…it will remain open at least until after election day…Obama simply will not risk releasing one of the terrorists there for fear that someone will be killed by the former inmate…in your liberal mind those men might be innocents cruelly arrested and tortured by Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler, but the realty is that they are killers who want to kill again).  Add in things like the failure to terminate the Bush tax cuts, failure to raise taxes on “the rich” some more, failure to get a single-payer health plan and it all adds up to a grand disappointment to the left.

And so a possible primary challenger…if Nader can dredge one up.  Given Nader’s statement, he’s likely to find someone…but unless he finds someone with real stature, it will just be a joke candidacy, easily crushed by the Democrat machine.  Nader will have to find someone who is both willing to ship out with the craziest denizens of the liberal nuthouse while also being someone with a credible political record.  This will not be easy to do.  But always fun to watch…stay tuned.

John Kerry, Liberal Fascist

Mark Noonan34 Comments

From Pajamas Media:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Hanoi) must be really worried about how badly the Democrats are losing the argument on government spending. He took to MSNBC to goad the media into censoring the opinions and statements of people with whom he disagrees (and who happen to have the facts on their side). The irony of his having made such an argument on an openly ideological network seems to have been lost on Sen. Kerry.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: “And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.”…

Translation – if you MSMers know what’s good for you, you’ll stop allowing any dissenting voices to appear.  We can’t have those hicks and bitter clingers out there getting their views across.  Don’t you realize that we Democrats could be crushed next year if the truth keeps coming out?

Its not like Kerry has been a tribune of truth, you know?  He is the guy, after all, who did say our brave men and women in Vietnam were acting like Genghis Khan…so, slanders have fallen easily from his lips.  And, at any event, shouldn’t it be up to the people to listen to all voices and decide for themselves who is right?

Not to our liberals, it would seem…because if the people hear differing opinions, then they are sure to reject the liberal view.

Behind the Unemployment Numbers

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Mish gathered the details:

  • US Payrolls +117,000
  • US Unemployment Rate -.1 to 9.1%
  • Participation Rate -.2 to 63.9% accounting for drop in unemployment rate
  • Actual number of Employed (by Household Survey) fell by 38,000
  • Unemployment rose by 156,000
  • Those dropping out of the labor force rose by 374,000
  • Civilian population rose by 182,000, Labor Force declined by 193,000
  • Average Weekly Workweek was unchanged at 34.3 hours
  • Average Private Hourly Earnings Increased by 10 Cents
  • Government employment decreased by 37,000 – a genuine bright-spot

Without that drop in the labor force, unemployment would have risen – as soon as I saw the headline number of +117,000 and a drop in unemployment I knew, without even checking, that something was wrong.  If we gained 250,000 jobs a month, unemployment would remain high for years.  A plus 117K just wasn’t enough to lower the unemployment rate unless someone decided that fewer people were in the labor force.  Presto!, that is what we got.  Amazing, huh?  Great how that works out when we’ve got a President desperately seeking re-election…

UPDATE:  The headline that says it all, from Bloomberg:

Bernanke Models Prove Faulty as Fed Forecasts Succumb to Downward Revision

How to Fix the Economy

Mark Noonan37 Comments

I’ve been yammering on about it for years, so maybe you’re tired of reading my views…so, here’s someone else to say it.  Victor Davis Hanson over at NRO’s The Corner:

…If the government were an individual household, the only way out would be to cut spending and find new sources of wealth. Given worldwide demand for food and fuel, and given recent quite astounding new finds of natural gas and oil in the Dakotas, the eastern seaboard, offshore, the American west, Alaska, and Canada, it seems that we should be hell-bent on recovering these high-value fuels through new drilling, refineries, and pipelines, including ways to power our heavy trucks and equipment on natural gas. We should be planting acre to acre and end nonsensical biofuel subsidies and artificial limitations on irrigation deliveries to California’s West Side and elsewhere in the West. We need a national manufacturing policy that prunes regulations and encourages investment here in the U.S., ceases talk of new taxes, repeals the trillion-dollar take-over of the health-care industry, and stops hectoring Boeing about opening a new facility or trying to shut down energy generation plants…

As I’ve been saying – make, mine and grow more of our own stuff.  That is the only way out of this…we have to start creating wealth again.  Of course, this does require hard work, does require getting a little dirty and doesn’t allow for nearly the current number of government bureaucrats, mid-level managers and diversity coordinators, but that is just some of the heavy sacrifices we’ll have to make.

I believe it was Reagan who once said there are no easy solutions, but there are simple ones.  Getting our nation back on track will not be easy, but it is quite simple.  Ditch the idiot liberalism of the past few decades, insist everyone pull their weight and just get to work.  It’ll all be ok, if we do that…no easily; not with out a lot of tears and sweat, but it’ll all be ok.

Asia-Pacific Markets Getting Hammered

Mark Noonan1 Comment

Mish has the details and a roundup of really, really lousy economic headlines.

My take:  if the employment report comes in better than expected tomorrow, then the sheep who run our financial system will some how, some way, hold it to be evidence that things aren’t as bad as they look…the market might surge by hundreds of points.  On the other hand, if it comes in worse than expected, then watch out.

The bottom line for the global economy is, as it has been for years, that there is way too much debt.  Each and every nation – yes, including China – is honeycombed with bad debt which cannot be repaid…in some cases never, in other cases just not in the contractual time frame.  We borrowed ourselves in to a global boom and now the piper has to be paid.  We might dodge this one more time but no matter how many times we pull back from the cliff, we are still ultimately heading for a crash.  Default is the only way out for some nations, while a quasi-default will be required of all other nations.

The lesson to be learned is that debt is poison…we’ve been hoodwinked; suckered by a classic, get-rich-quick ponzi scheme which held that we could borrow forever, live like kings and never have to repay.  Don’t get me wrong, here – we, the people, for the most part eagerly joined in the scam.  We lost our heads – and, more importantly, we lost our sense of moral rightness.  Once we pay this price, it is to be hoped that we’ll take our lesson to heart and build an economy based on hard work, savings and careful investment.

Liberal Fascists to Silence Pro-Life Voices

Mark Noonan9 Comments

From the Bay Citizen:

San Francisco leaders are launching a coordinated attack against what they call “one of the most serious threats to reproductive rights today” — so-called crisis pregnancy centers that advertise as though they provide abortions, but counsel against them.In a joint press conference with Supervisor Malia Cohen, City Attorney Dennis Herrera said the “right-wing, politically motivated centers” use false advertisements to target vulnerable populations and can cost women valuable time as they decide whether or not to end a pregnancy.

“Women’s reproductive rights are under assault,” Herrera said…

How dare they!  To think that someone might delay, even by a minute, the butchering of unborn children!  Thank goodness the government of San Francisco is up to the task…once they’re done, if you wind up pregnant in San Francisco, you’ll run no risk of someone offering an opinion that you shouldn’t kill your child.  Then, at last, all will be paradise in San Francisco, right?

A couple other cities under the iron grip of liberal fascism have also passed such laws.  They are very naturally being challenged in court and, if it gets there, the Supreme Court will strike down all such laws.  Free speech is free speech, even if liberals don’t like it.

But isn’t this just like our liberals?  They simply don’t want to hear us, at all…not even the slightest breath of non-liberal speech is to be allowed, if they had their way.  The fascism of the left grows apace (and is matched by the growth of liberal racism and anti-Semitism)…and I really do feel sorry for them.  To have so closed their minds and hearts to reason and mercy must make for a cold, lonely life.  They are screaming for relief, but all they do is keep lacerating themselves, and tightening their shackles a little more.

For goodness sake, liberals…do one small thing:  allow other people to talk some out of killing their children.  That is all…if you can just bring yourselves to tolerate that, you’ll be on the path to recovery.

Financial Crisis, Part 2: Welcome Back, 2008?

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Quite a slide in stocks today, huh?  As for me, I’m congratulating myself on shifting all my 401k funds from stocks to bonds just yesterday.  I’m not sure that this move, in the end, will really save my 401k, but I was seeking some means of avoiding the crash in value I had back in 2008.

So, what now?  Do we keep crashing, or does something happen to make it all go away, at least for a while?  I honestly don’t know – but over at Zero Hedge a dire warning that there is no way out:

…Nothing from 2008 has actually been fixed. Faith and trust do not exist in the financial system anymore. Everyone knows the deal… they just don’t want to admit it as it means GAME OVER for the system as we know it.

Which is why now that the next round of the Financial Crisis has hit, there’s really nothing the Fed or anyone can do about it. They had their big chance to fix things in 2008 and failed. This time around, no one will believe the Fed can fix anything. And what’s coming will make 2008 look like a joke….

Could be – but I still think that the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury can pull a couple more rabbits out of the hat.  They can’t fix it, but they may be able to juggle the financial balls until after election day, next year.  Which is, by the way, the primary aim of the Ruling Class…keeping things together until after the election and hoping that no TEA Party-backed candidate wins the White House.  Their ultimate nightmare is a President who will actually change the system…the corrupt system, that is, which benefits the Ruling Class.

As for me, I admit to a tremor of fear today … I work at a firm highly sensitive to things like stock market crashes; this recession could become a depression right quick (on the “a recession is when your neighbor looses his job, a depression is when you lose yours” theory).  But, with all that, things will be as they will.  We’re in one heck of a mess – the end of Big Government liberalism will not be easy and it won’t be pretty.  Decades of living by lies has to be paid for…and we who are in the work force today will just have to pay.  But, also, we must change things…so that the children and grandchildren have that better future the liberals of the 60’s told our parents we’d be living today.