Author: Mark Noonan

Obama to GOP: One False Move and Granny Gets It

Mark Noonan23 Comments

A disgusting scare tactic on the part of the President, but entirely expected:

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News…

Which is entirely BS – Social Security has its own funding mechanism and there is currently more than enough money coming in to it to ensure that the checks go out on the 3rd.  Obama is just trying to scare oldsters in to putting pressure on the GOP – hoping that such pressure will force the GOP to cave in on a debt ceiling increase without any fundamental budget reform.

Now Obama’s cards are entirely on the table – to preserve Big Government is his only goal.  That we are heading towards bankruptcy and renewed recession doesn’t matter.  That we can’t afford tax hikes and must cut spending is unimportant.  What is important to Obama is that the pork he has spread around his constituencies since 2009 continue.  Think about it – we are spending at least a trillion more per year since Obama took office.  We can dispense with that additional trillion and still have all the money we need for social services, defense, etc, etc, etc.  It is just that Obama doesn’t want to give up that extra money he and his Democrats piled on when they held the Congressional majority.  This is the core of Obamunism:  piles of money for everyone who helps elect liberals.

Hold firm, GOP – don’t blink.  Let the Democrats carry Big Government in to 2012 all by themselves.  Even if by some chance the American people choose Obama and his Democrats, then at least we will have gone down fighting for what is right…but my belief is that the majority are seeing through the scam, and we will reap the reward if we hold firm.

The Bravest Marine

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Somewhere up in Heaven, my Dad is saying “Semper Fi”.  You want to date someone who looks like this?

Then all you have to do is join the Marines, go fight a bit in Afghanistan and then grow the biggest, brassiest pair you can imagine…

It worked, too.

This could be the most effective recruiting tool the Marines have ever had – become a Jarhead, date a Hollywood star.  Rather disappointed that one of my fellow squids didn’t think of this…

Obamunism! Cisco to Fire 10,000

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Honestly, liberals, just how is that whole hopey-changey thing working out for you?  Because it is working out just lousy for us.  From Bloomberg:

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), the largest networking-equipment company, may cut as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, to revive profit growth, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The cuts include as many as 7,000 jobs that would be eliminated by the end of August, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final. Cisco, based in San Jose, California, is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who took buyouts, the people said…

If printing up bags of money and borrowing like mad worked, then Cisco would not be firing people.  Period.  End of story.  Sit down and shut up, liberals.

Don’t get me wrong here – Cisco is being amazingly asinine; the talent exists in those they are about to fire to build Cisco out of the hole.  But that is not how things work in our Big Government/ Big Corporation world…Big Corporation fires people because it allows one more quarter of profits, Big Government puts them on welfare because it allows one more electoral victory for the Ruling Class.  No one ever thinks that the fundamental problem is the Bigs – and that if we treated them all to a round of tar and feathers, lots of things would work out better.

But, still, liberals – this is your mess.  Your man Obama said that his policies would prevent exactly this:  layoffs.  All that “free” money and all that borrowed money…it was supposed to get things working.  It hasn’t.  It never will.  You’ve failed.

Eurozone Meltdown

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Both Mish and Zero Hedge are keeping an excellent running commentary on the Eurozone crisis.  To nutshell it – the bailout of Greece has failed completely (with Greek bond prices rising above 30%) and the contagion is spreading to Italy, where they are doing financial backflips to stave off collapse.

We’ll see if they can pull it off – my view remains the same:  even if they manage to plug the leak here, the dam is so swiftly collapsing that it will just move to one of a dozen other places.  Collapse is inevitable – there isn’t enough money in the world, not if Bernanke and the ECB printed day and night for 100 years, to make up for all the garbage debt there is in the world.  The only question is how bad it will be – repeat of Lehman in 2008?  Or complete financial melt down?  Time will tell – but we have to get through the crash before we can start to rebuild – the bogus debt and fake wealth has to be liquidated so that everyone knows where they stand, then we can rebuild (and, hopefully, with a bit more wisdom).

Michelle Bachmann, Hero

Mark Noonan6 Comments

She understands:

I saw Bachmann on O’Reilly and I have to say that while Bachmann was great, she did flub one of her answerst.  O’Reilly about whether or not Geithner is lying – whether, that is, we’ll really have a catastrophe if we don’t raise the debt ceiling?  Bachmann answered that Geithner is wrong – probably out of an unwillingness to ever directly call someone a liar (one bit of courage we are sorely lacking in the modern world).  Bachammn should have answered like this:

“Lying?  I don’t know, Bill; lying our stupid.  Think about it:  what Geithner, Obama and the rest are saying is that the only way to avoid bankruptcy is to go further in to debt. ”

You have to be some kind of special definition of obtuse to believe such nonsense – piling on more debt is what will cause our default.  The way to avoid default is to cease piling on more debt.  Remember, the only reason to raise the debt ceiling is because you want to borrow more money – you want to continue to live beyond your means.  I don’t know about any of you, but it seems to me that the best course of action for a man teetering on the edge of bankruptcy is to spend less money – certainly not to borrow any more.

Bachmann is right, though, about the fact that we won’t default – we have plenty of revenues coming in to pay off old debts, roll them over with new debts and meet the vital needs – social security, medicare/medicaid, defense, etc.  What we don’t have the money for is things like the Departments of Commerce, Labor and Energy, as well as whole swaths of more useful Departments like Health and Defense.  We can, if we are only willing to offend core, Democrat constituencies, easily cut several hundred billion out of the 2012 budget…and that would eliminate any need for raising the debt ceiling.  Bachmann sees this – so does a small but growing number of Congressional GOPers.  So, too, will a majority of the American people once it is properly explained to them.

So, this makes Bachmann a hero – she said it:  the Emperor has no clothes – debt does not make you rich.  It is the first step in restoring fiscal sanity to our nation.

Geithner: Sucks to be You, America

Mark Noonan9 Comments

That, at any rate, is my loose translation – from the AP:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says many Americans will face hard times for a long time to come.

He says President Barack Obama rescued the United States from a second Great Depression and will keep working to strengthen the economy. But Geithner says will be some time before many people feel like the country is recovering.

Geithner tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it’s a very tough economy. He says that for a lot of people “it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come.”

Staying loyal to his boss but also getting a little attack of the truth – it is absurd to think that Obama staved off the Great Depression because we’re still in it, it is just that the official (and manipulated) statistics don’t show it.  But we, the people, sure as heck feel it.  But it is almost refreshing to get a bit of honesty out of the Obama Administration – this will, indeed, be very hard to deal with.  But it doesn’t really have to go on for a “long time”.  We can cut the nightmare short in November of 2012.

Barack Milhous Obama

Mark Noonan3 Comments

What did he know and when did he know it?

It must be pointed out that no lives were lost in Watergate – while we’ve got one dead American in the “Gunwalker” scandal…and who knows how many Mexicans might wind up dead.  And all we’re getting from Obama’s “Justice” Department is stonewalling…the truth has to come out, we must find out what happened – who ordered it, who knew about it and what was the real purpose?

Remember what happened here – American law enforcement agencies connived at the sale and transport of American arms to Mexican drug cartels.  This is not something which just comes out of some cop’s head – someone very senior in the Obama Administration cooked up the plan and I cannot imagine it going forward with out AG Holder’s permission, at least.

The people have a right to know – and Congress must continue to press this issue and go where ever the evidence leads.

Obama to Hold News Conference About Debt

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Having failed in his efforts to get the GOP to commit political suicide by caving in on taxes, Obama is now just seeking the last ounce of political advantage he can from the debt talks – from Reuters:

U.S. President Barack Obama will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Monday about the status of negotiations to cut the deficit and raise the debt ceiling, the White House said on Sunday.

Obama met with congressional leaders for about 75 minutes Sunday evening and will meet again with them on Monday “to discuss the ongoing efforts to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction,” the White House said, without giving a time for that session.

I think that for the Democrats they are mostly working out a campaign theme for 2012 – the reason things are lousy is because those mean, greedy Republicans wouldn’t agree to a tax hike on millionaire’s and billionaire’s corporate jets.  No, seriously; it is how things are shaping up.  Yes, Democrats are that out of ideas and that convinced that the American people are infantile enough to buy it.

This 11 am presser – a bit of an odd time to hold one – is to try and grab hold of the media narrative for the remainder of the debt talks.  Obama is trying to make it so that the MSM continually asks Republicans why they won’t tax corporate jets.  The idea is that endless repetition will make the GOP look bad and give Obama and his Democrats a lot of good sound bites for the 2012 campaign (remember, America can go down in flames – for Democrats that is not nearly as bad as a Democrat losing an election:  all else is subordinated to Democrat victory).  Of course, this will only work, at all, if Obama comes across in a Presidential manner.  If he spends half an hour just insulting the GOP, then people will simply tune him out, no matter how much his MSM lapdogs try to make it otherwise.

We’ll see how it comes out – but I’ve never been more confident about conservative/libertarian political prospects than I am now.

No More Arms to Egypt

Mark Noonan1 Comment

A bit of Obama foreign policy insanity noted over at Commentary:

While everyone in Washington was concentrating on the debt crisis this week, the Obama administration attempted to slip through a questionable arms deal that requires serious scrutiny. Though it got little attention, the Defense Department officially notified Congress on Friday that it was authorizing the sale of 125 M1A1 tanks to Egypt as well as other weapons, equipment, parts, training and logistical support. While most of the military sales to Egypt have sailed through without objection in the more than 30 years since it signed a peace deal with Israel, this is the first such sale since the fall of the Mubarak regime earlier this year. Which is exactly why the sale ought to be held up until the unsettled situation in the most populous country in the Arab world is better understood…

Until we see what sort of government emerges in Egypt, we should presume the worst and that means not providing Egypt with arms and support which could at some date be used against us or our allies.  The deal to arm Egypt with America’s best weapons was predicated upon Egypt firmly adhering to the Camp David accords and peace with Israel…already we see the rising Egyptian political class calling in to question these basic issues.  Wisdom dictates that we proceed with caution.

It is to be hoped that some how, some way, a non barbarous regime rises in Egypt.  If that is the case, we can resume arms shipments and make up for anything we denied them during the transition period.  According to the linked article, Congress has 30 days to object and thus halt the deal – I hope the House GOP leadership takes up this issue and forces a halt.  If Obama won’t use common sense in this matter, someone else will have to step up.