Author: Mark Noonan

Boehner: “The Best We Could Get”

Mark Noonan40 Comments

From NRO’s The Corner:

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told GOP members on a conference call Sunday evening that he had reached a deal with congressional leaders and the White House, but that it wouldn’t happen “unless we have membership on board.” It remains to be seen how many House Republicans will end up supporting the final package, but members on the call told National Review Online they thought it would ultimately pass with bipartisan support. “I’m not sure I’m going to support it but I think it will probably pass,” said freshman Rep. Dennis Ross (R., Fla.). Members described the tone of the call as overwhelmingly positive, with many praising Boehner’s efforts in the negotiations. Despite his concerns about the final deal, Ross said “leadership has done a very good job of getting it to this point,” and described a sense of relief among members, many of whom may not love the deal, but are nonetheless happy to be moving on to the next fight.

According to sources, Boehner said the deal was “the best that we could get.” In particular, he thanked the 87 freshmen members for their input, without which “we wouldn’t have gotten this far.” Ross concurred. “I think the freshman class has been very valuable to this process,” he said…

That last bit is really best translated as, “goodness, we didn’t fully realize until now that these TEA Party people are serious!”.  But, all in all, it is a good thing – this is the first time since the glory days of 1995 that a GOP House Speaker can count on a solid, conservative GOP caucus…one which won’t go all soft on him in return for campaign cash and other DC blandishments.  But it is not the best we could get – it is the best that the GOP could get using this strategy.

We need to think carefully not just about what we want, but how we want to get there.  We did not do a good enough job of forcing the Democrats to defend their disgusting Big Government liberalism – they were defensive, to be sure, but they were still defending the concept of using government money to be nice to people…we need tactics which will expose the fact that they really want to use government to reward liberal cronies.

A relentless drumbeat of just who among the rich and powerful are getting government money and just who they donate to (and speak and write in favor of) should be used in the next battle.  Show the American people that “food for the starving” really works out to “Cadillac for Nancy Pelosi’s crony-capitalist”.  These people on the left have been looting the Treasury for decades.  Sweat heart deals for government contracts, special tax and regulatory breaks:  things like that and the pols get, in return, campaign cash, investment tips and well paid corporate sinecures once out of office.  Show this to the American people…force the liberals away from defending charity and in to defending their greed for wealth and power.

We also need to win the class war – and my idea of a “wealth tax” is the best way to end that battle once and for all.  Democrats are endlessly harping on how we GOPers want to steal food out of granny’s mouth so we can give tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.  Do them one better – propose a tax which will won’t hit anyone except a millionaire or billionaire and watch the Democrats try to stop it…force them to reveal that their “tax the rich” rhetoric is really “tax the middle class, leave our rich donors alone”.

Still and all a good effort.  Big Government liberalism is firmly on the defensive – and Obama and his Democrats will have to defend their worthless, wasteful, immoral and un-American welfare State all through 2012.  We have them on the run – now, let’s push them over the edge, and take back our country.

NAACP Executive Convicted of Voter Fraud

Mark Noonan10 Comments

From the DC Caller:

…In a story ignored by the national media, in April a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee…

…Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.

In the trial, forensic scientist Bo Scales testified that Sowers’s DNA was found on the inner seals of five envelopes containing absentee ballots…

This is why we on the right want people to show ID when voting and why we want voter rolls purged of dead, moved or invalid voters.  Doing so would make it exceptionally more difficult for a criminal like Sowers to operate.  Naturally, our liberals are opposed to this for that very reason – if we make voter fraud difficult, it will impinge upon liberals’ ability to cheat.

It is my contention – backed up by the amount of research Matt and I did in writing Caucus of Corruption – that voter fraud is endemic to the Democrat party.  It is not a bizarre event; it is not something which some times occurs in the heat of political battle…it is carefully organized and done in such a way that whenever a vote comes close, Democrats can count upon a pool of bogus votes to put them over the top.  I believe that in all voting districts where Democrats have any sort of control, the cheating is systemic…even in areas where they are sure to win as a sort of “just in case” assurance.

This first came to my attention in 2000 when I got down and dirty in to Florida precinct returns and noted a bunch of precincts which had 90% or better turn out with 90% or more of their votes going for Al Gore.  In the normal course of events, this just doesn’t happen…90% of any group more than a 20 simply cannot make it to any event (you’ll note this each time you set up a dinner party at your house) and you don’t get 90% of the votes going one way except when you’re cheating; there simply isn’t that level of unanimity in politics.  You might get 90% voting in favor of motherhood (and that is a “might”), but outside of that sort of thing, people tend to disagree.  This told me that a certain percentage of the votes being cast were bogus…and then I just paid attention since then, and noted it more and more often.

Dead voters, multiple registrations, illegal voters, ballots being “discovered” by Democrats in just sufficient numbers to put their guy over the top.  Absentee ballots have become an especially strong tool for fraud (in my view, only active duty military, police, firefighters and emergency responders should be allowed absentee ballots…everyone can just get to the polls, or don’t vote).  This conviction is just the very tip of a gigantic iceberg – quite honestly, we should investigate every race where the margin of victory was less than 1%…doesn’t matter who won, just investigate it…place the balloting under the microscope.  I bet you’ll find questionable votes throughout the system, and I’ll bet almost all of them will eventually be traced to liberal persons and groups.

We must bring an end to this – and here’s how we do it:

1.  Require all voter registration be done in person.  No mail in registration, no people sent out in to the streets to collect registrations.  If you want to register to vote, get yourself to a voter registration office, present your ID and some sort of proof of address, and register.  Yes, this is a bit difficult…but voting is a responsibility as much as a right, and if you wish to exercise the right you’ll have to take the responsibility to get your registration done.  All voters must register at least 6 months in front of election day in order to ensure that there is time for random registration checks to be done by election officials.  All persons registering to vote must swear to their legal ability to vote and the correctness of the information provided on penalty of one year in jail for lying.

2.  Require all voters to present their picture ID before voting.  Once a person has voted, have them dip their right index finger in blue ink.

3.  Voter rolls must be purged every other year.  The voter registration bureaucrats must send out letter requiring a response from all registered voters.  All letters returned or un-answered will result in that person being purged from the voter rolls.  All voter rolls must be bounced against lists of convicted criminals and anyone convicted of a felony must be purged.  All voter rolls must be bounced against a registrar of deaths since the last election and all deceased persons must be purged.

That would do it – we would ensure that almost all votes cast in any election would be legitimate.  Do not tax me with whines about how this would be unfair to this or that voting group…first off, I don’t buy the liberal-racist view that ethnic minorities aren’t smart enough to register to vote and present a picture ID.  Secondly, we must ensure that only those allowed to vote participate in our elections and that no illegal votes are counted.  If we are to be a democratically governed republic, the security of our vote is an absolute requirement…and the need for integrity in voting trumps every other consideration.

Enough of this liberal voter fraud.

Debt Deal Done, Fake Crisis Averted

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Hot Air has the details – it mostly works out to a defeat for the left as it looks like they didn’t get tax hikes, didn’t get as much new debt ceiling as they wanted and were prevented from gutting defense.  The deal was done because, in the end, Obama saw his approval rating cratering and wanted to stop the bleeding – some times you do have to let a crisis go to waste.  Especially when you made one up out of whole cloth.

The real budget crisis comes in 2015 or so if we don’t significantly cut spending by then.  While Obama is President, we won’t be able to do that – so the whole solution to our real budget crisis is to get Obama out of the White House in 2012.

Syrian Army Crushes Rebels

Mark Noonan11 Comments

From Bloomberg:

Syrian soldiers stormed Hama and other flashpoints of unrest, leaving at least 121 dead, an activist said, as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces sought to reassert control on the eve of Ramadan, when protests are likely to intensify.

Tanks shelled Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, where at least 100 people were killed today, said Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Damascus-based Arab Organization for Human Rights.

Three people died near the city of Daraa, and fighting in other areas raised the toll to 121, Merhi said…

Why is the Syrian government doing this?  Because they know that the one nation on earth which can enforce decency won’t act…or, even if we did act, then under Obama we would act with sufficient speed and power to affect the outcome.  Get used to this boys and girls – because Obama has abdicated America’s leadership role, the world now belongs to whomever is willing to be the most evil.  This massacre in Hama is just a slight foretaste of what is to come.  Tyrants around the world are watching events and getting ready grab what they can and settle scores…all in the knowledge that Obama is more likely to condemn a US ally than an enemy.

The world is becoming a very dangerous place…and to help you sleep better, the word is that the Democrats want 50% of all spending cuts to come out of defense, alone.

 

Budget Deal in the Works

Mark Noonan61 Comments

From the AP:

Officials say the White House and Republican leaders in Congress are making significant progress toward a last-minute agreement to avoid a default threatened for next week.

These officials say the two sides are discussing a plan to raise the debt limit by about $2.4 trillion and enact spending cuts of a slightly larger amount in two stages.

The deal under discussion would also require Congress to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but not require its approval.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the discussions.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air surmises that, finally, Obama is actually willing to state what he wants – what he will sign.  In other words, we’re finally getting a White House plan for the debt.  All this time we’ve been pretty much working in a void because Obama never indicated what was actually acceptable to him…and it seems that Reid had actually  signed on to the GOP plan, at Obama’s behest, only to be told at the last minute by Obama that he wouldn’t sign it.

My feeling is that Obama was hoping that the looming crisis (which is entirely fake, by the way) would force the GOP to cave and they’d go ahead and either give him a “clean” debt ceiling increase through 2013 or, at least, go along with some tax hikes.  As it became clear that GOP would give him neither of these things – and as Obama’s approval rating has cratered through this mess – I think that someone finally got Obama to realize that he had to defuse this manufactured crisis…make it go away before the worst of all things happened:  Tuesday arrived and the world didn’t end.

For our side, we’ve done well – we’ve laid down the marker for future budget negotiations and demonstrated conclusively that the GOP – at least in its TEA Party element – will not back down from a fight.

“Never let a crisis go to waste” was Obama’s watchword from day one…even if he had to make up a crisis.  But now Obama has learned that dishonesty can only carry you so far.

The Post-Hope and Change World

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Victor Davis Hanson notes the darkening scene:

…But it is in the Pacific where we may well see the most dramatic changes of American withdrawal. Insidiously, the Chinese are translating their formidable financial power into a new muscular military profile. North Korea is as crazy as ever. The proverbially terrorized shop-keeper in the region thus does not know where to turn—to the mostly absent cop on the beat dreaming of his union pension, or the young thugs who demand protection money or else.

The result is that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines have one eye on China, and one on Washington—and therefore are increasingly terrified. One of three things will happen: our shaky allies will demand a higher U.S. profile in the region, and new assurances of safety under the U.S. nuclear umbrella (all quite unlikely); or they will go nuclear and, unlike North Korea, their missiles will work like Camrys and Kias; or they will make face-saving accommodations with the Chinese that will result in a new version of the old Co-Prosperity Sphere (China 2011 reminds me a lot of Japan 1935).

Right now, I could not imagine that anyone in Taiwan would believe the Obama administration would say or do anything should Chinese ships tomorrow show up a mile off the Taiwanese coast—but could envision the most eloquent speech why Taiwan must inevitably rejoin communist China. Indeed, Obama would call on both sides for restraint, while chewing out the Taiwanese for provoking the Chinese, while working out a “balanced” deal that ceded Taiwanese waters to China—until the next incident.

In short, we will be back soon to about 1937. The old rules are disappearing. All that we await for is some audacious trouble-maker to make perfectly clear that there are no such rules…

There will be a World War Three, you know?  It will probably be launched by China, but it could also be triggered by some darn fool thing done by Russia, Iran or Egypt.  The bottom line is that we are returning to international anarchy as Obama’s weakness and our massive debt convince more and more of the global players that we are off the board.  The global school master is out on break…and now the delinquents have their chance.

There is a cold, hard fact of life that our liberals – like Obama – simply do not grasp:  human nature does not change.  Not ever.  The wars and cruelties of the past and present are not an unintentional result: they are the result of what people desire.  When anyone out there in the world desires something they do not merit people will suffer – in greater or lesser degree, but they will suffer.  Naturally, the more powerful the evil-doer, the more suffering caused.  No matter what situation you create, no matter how hard you try to be just and merciful, the nature of mankind ensures that some people will simply reject the path of righteousness…some people simply from base motives will act badly, and thus there will be horrible things happening.

This rather bleak fact of life should turn all those of good will towards those practical policies which will avoid or ameliorate the effects of evil.  Not get rid of it – we can’t do that – but reduce the frequency of evil, and the damage done by it.  An attitude of careful saving against a rainy day, of insisting upon everyone pulling their own weight, of providing and maintaining a very strong military force…this is what is needed to navigate a world in which some are out to do wrong.  At bottom it is a recognition of duty and an understanding that you simply will not get everything you want…because you have onerous duties to perform, there simply won’t be enough time or resources for every pleasure and whim which seizes your mind, even if some of them are of quite admirable intent.

Because we undercut the last President and then elected a complete fool as his successor, the United States is rapidly weakening – not so much in actual power, but in the perception of American power.  This will touch off a scramble among the ill-disposed to grab as much as they can while the getting is good.  Those who are wicked are preparing – building up armed forces, undermining targeted States and powers, preparing the global stage for their nefarious designs.  This will eventually lead to war on a grand scale – a war which we will fight, and we will win (truly, the power of the United States is functionally limitless and far more than any other power can marshal).  But I don’t think after this next big war that we’ll go back as we did after the two previous World Wars and the Cold War.  No, I think that those who will sustain the United States and carry us through to victory will insist upon some significant changes.

I don’t see a future America pouring out its treasure to rebuild enemy States.  I don’t see America tying itself to corrupt international bodies.  I don’t see, in domestic affairs, a “well, hey, we did all the fighting – but don’t you who stayed home worry about it, we don’t mind all the suffering we went through” attitude.  I see in that portion of America (probably still a majority, but controlling no matter what by simple willingness to put duty first) demanding that we end this charade…this fool’s bargain where we pretend that those who don’t work are worthy of endless support; where those who don’t serve in the military are as patriotic as those who do; where those who whine loudest get the most.  A new bargain will be struck, where those who do the work and shed the blood are given precedence over those who don’t.

False ideas can get a lot of traction and go very far, but because they are false they are doomed to fail.  For a century now we have been living in an Age of Lies…an age of con artists.  That age is coming to a close – a new age dawns.

Are We Approaching Obama’s “Killer Rabbit” Moment?

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Larry Sabato is waiting for it:

In a Tweet no president could love, political analyst and University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, raises the specter of yesteryear, and not in a good way.

“And Obama? POTUS looks weak, irrelevant, Carter-ized–at least for now. Any day, I expect him to be attacked by a killer rabbit.”

When Larry Sabato sees a killer rabbit looming ahead, the White House should be worried.

For you youngsters out there, the “killer rabbit” was a rabbit which attacked Jimmy Carter in 1979 and became part of the Carter legend…it just crystallized a growing American conviction that Carter wasn’t in any way, shape or form fit to be President of the United States..  As Obama has tended to follow the Carter model, we can only expect such a thing to happen, soon.  Our only worry is that we’ll also land in a “Hostage Crisis” event, as well.

Global Warming Hoax Update

Mark Noonan11 Comments

From James Taylor of Forbes:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models…

Which is, of course, entirely unsurprising.  But we should also keep one thing in mind – this past ten years has been the first time we’ve ever gathered in a systemic manner data on the global climate.  In other words, only just now are we developing sufficient information to test climate theories.  For all we know, maybe the world really is warming up – but it could also be relatively stable, or even cooling.  Until we have sufficient data, we simply will not know.

But that didn’t stop con artists like Al Gore and the rest of the global warming alarmists.  There was money to be made and power to be seized and, so, with their “settled science” they set about scaring the world and raking in the bucks.  We really should see  if there is any way we can criminally prosecute Gore and the rest over this – or at least work up a class action civil suit to get back from them all the money they’ve made off this scam.

This has been one of the most shameful things ever done – a gigantic mis-allocation of resources which could have been used to genuinely improve the environment.  Think of all the species protection, reforestation, clean up and other environmental actions which could have been done with the money thrown down the global warming rat hole.  Learn the lesson of this – never trust anyone who comes to you with an end of the world theory…anyone who says we’ve got “X” number of years to fix things in the environment or we’ll all die is a con artist, plain and simple.

Obamunism! 1.3% 2nd Quarter “Growth”

Mark Noonan25 Comments

From Reuters:

The U.S. economy came perilously close to flat-lining in the first quarter and grew at a meager 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June period, leading economists to warn of recession if a stand-off over U.S. debt does not end quickly.

The Commerce Department data on Friday also showed the current lull in the economy began earlier than had been thought, with the growth losing steam late last year.

That raised questions on the long held view by both Federal Reserve officials and independent economists that the slowdown in growth this year was mostly due to transitory factors.

The U.S. economy in the first quarter expanded at just a 0.4 percent pace…

And here’s the kicker – if they revised Q1 from 1.9% to 0.4% growth, what do you think will be the likely outcome when they revise Q2’s 1.3% growth?  There is, of course, chance that later revisions will be upwards, but I doubt that anyone would make a bet on that happening.  Revisions of late have tended towards worse news – so I think we all know there the Q2 revisions are heading.

Do any of you liberals out there need any more proof that Obamunism! is a failure?  That you can’t borrow and print your way to wealth?  If any of you liberals are unwilling to admit defeat, what I’d like to hear is just how much more money you think we should print and borrow…what is the magic figure which will certainly grow the economy?

UPDATE:  Except for the Republican governed States, we’d probably already be in recession.