Uncategorized

Talking Up Mitch Daniels for 2012

Mark Noonan

Certainly a strong possibility:

Republican Mitch Daniels has repeatedly insisted that his 2008 run for a second term as Indiana’s governor was his last election and that he’s not interested in the “savagery” of a national campaign.

But like it or not, Daniels’ name is being dropped in conservative GOP circles as someone to watch in 2012. Many say Daniels is just what the battered GOP needs, a blend of conservative values, cool demeanor and fiscal discipline.

“Mitch has been steady to the cause, he’s stayed principled,” said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. “The nation is going to recognize him.”

Some political observers say Daniels is as good a bet as any for a national party reeling from Democrats’ solid victory last year…

…The 60-year-old millionaire governor is equally at home in Washington and Indiana after serving as President George W. Bush’s budget director and an adviser to President Ronald Reagan. He earned a reputation in Washington as the “blade” for his efforts to promote fiscal responsibility in Congress and carried that to Indiana, where he took over a state with a $800 million deficit and worked with lawmakers to pass a balanced budget in his first year. The state’s fiscal year ended June 30 with a $1.3 billion surplus.

Certainly he’s vastly better at this whole governing thing than our current President. As an aside, I wonder when the MSM will stop describing us GOPers as “reeling”? I don’t feel like I’m reeling. Does anyone else out there? I’m actually licking my chops over our prospects for 2009 and 2010, right now. Harry Reid trails two second-rank politicians out here in Nevada – and my bet is that he’s going to lose to a third-ranked one (wink, wink/nudge, nudge…by the way, anyone have any idea how to raise $25 million when you’re not the Senate Majority Leader? Heck – I guess it’ll just have to be done on less than that…).

The only problem I see with 2012 is that there might be as many as a dozen GOPers to enter the lists – unless a miracle happens, Obama’s going to be the most vulnerable incumbent President since Carter.

Liberal Fascism Strikes Again

Mark Noonan

First, shout down those you want out of power. Once in power, use the police to suppress dissent – from Now! Hampshire:

In four short years Carol Shea-Porter has evolved from a rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist who once had to be forcibly removed from a President George Bush event in Portsmouth to a Member of Congress who instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday.

In the appended video, Shea-Porter can be seen instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket. Shea-Porter previously held a lottery to determine who could ask questions. She can also be heard taunting the man on his way out by saying, “I do hope the movie theater can be a little quieter for you.”

NowHampshire.com has learned that the gentlemen Shea-Porter removed, Carl Tomanelli from Londonderry, is a retired New York City patrolman.

Do any of you liberals actually understand that freedom means that both parties to a debate get to speak their piece? The liberals salted in to the office applauded the cops removing the man for merely challenging the residency of one of the liberals!

Freedom is supposed to be messy, liberals – and its for everyone, not just your side.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

Have a care, before you say or do anything, of what it is you are saying our doing – you won’t be protected just because you are ok per the laws of men:

Now when the Pharisees gathered together to him, with some of the scribes, who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, observing the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they purify themselves; and there are many other traditions which they observe, the washing of cups and pots and vessels of bronze.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?”

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, `This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’ You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men.”

And he called the people to him again, and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.” For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.” – Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Poll: 62% Favor Tax Cuts Over More Government

Mark Noonan

From Rasmussen:

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Americans say it’s always better to cut taxes than increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their own money.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 20% of adults disagree, and 18% are not sure.

The new findings mark a nine-point increase in support for taxpayers as the best judges of spending since January.

The bloom is off the Obama rose – too much, too fast and too different from what Obama campaigned on. Here’s a hint for the future, Democrats: don’t do too much, don’t do it too fast…and, if it doesn’t cause massive internal bleeding, how about telling us the truth about who you are before the votes are cast?

Weekly Recap (2009-08-29)

Matt Margolis

The Blind Stock Market

Mark Noonan

Best description of it – and its not even meant as such:

U.S. stocks rose, while Treasuries and the dollar slipped, after a rebound in oil and natural gas spurred investors who pushed the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index up 52 percent since March into more bets on riskier assets.

The S&P 500 erased its steepest drop in two weeks to add 0.3 percent, rising for a third day. Crude for October delivery jumped 1.5 percent, reversing a 2.2 percent loss, as speculators bought the contract after it held above $70. Natural gas surged 4 percent in less than 30 minutes, erasing most of a 7.5 percent drop as front-month futures expired.

“This whole rally since the March lows has been extraordinarily highly correlated,” said Liam Dalton, who oversees about $1.1 billion as the New York-based chief executive officer of Axiom Capital Management. “When the commodities go up, it encourages people to think the growth factor is returning globally and they invest in stocks. One feeds into the other.”

One feeds into the other, indeed – that is what is happening here. News gets out there which, at a glance, might indicate a change for the better, and people who want to get back to where they were before September’s crash jump on it…forgetting, for instance, that the recent rise in durable goods orders was fueled by “cash for clunkers” car sales. It won’t happen, again, because people are not buying. Not too long ago, the market jumped on the news that oil stocks are lower than expected – without anyone noticing that stocks are low because refiners stopped buying because there’s less demand for the end-products of the oil.

Stupid really is as stupid does – and investors pushing this market up are being exceptionally stupid. I’m out – and I won’t get back in until I actually see something which indicates an economic recovery. You know, such as something like less than hundreds of banks on an FDIC watch list…or, maybe, when I stop seeing houses like mine going for less and less on the market. Call me screwy, but I’m just not buying what the stock boosters are selling.

UPDATE: Perhaps this Blind Rally is coming to an end? I hope so – the more it goes up, the worse people will get burned.

UPDATE II: Who is propping up the zombie banks? This post talks about it and wonders if the government isn’t, in some way, pumping banks like Freddie and Citi with new funds to prevent complete collapse. Could this rally be no more than central banks – here and around the world – trying to sustain the unsustainable?

Rangel Hides Money

Mark Noonan

And yet he’s in charge of deciding how we pay for things:

When normal people happen to “find” their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you’re Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth.

Earlier this month the Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee “amended” his 2007 financial disclosure form—to the tune of more than a half-million dollars in previously unreported assets and income. That number may be as high as $780,000, because Congress’s ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges. This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr. Rangel’s net worth for 2007 to somewhere between $1.028 million and $2.495 million, while his previous statement came in at $516,015 and $1.316 million.

When you’re a powerful Congressman and working diligently to increase tax rates to pay for President Obama’s health-care plan, we suppose it’s easy to lose track of one of your checking accounts. That would be the one at the federal credit union with a balance somewhere between $250,001 and maybe as high as $500,000. And when you’re crunched for time and pulling together bills to pass in a rush, we guess, too, that you might overlook several other investment accounts, even if some of them are sizable, such as the ones Mr. Rangel missed at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and BlackRock.

Oh, and those vacant properties in Glassboro, in southern Jersey? Everybody in Manhattan tries not to think much about New Jersey, so those lots and their as-much-as-$15,000 value must also have slipped down the memory hole. (The New York Post reported yesterday that Mr. Rangel failed to pay property taxes for two of the lots, according to the county clerk’s office.)

He’s a liberal hero – and they won’t demand investigations, nor his resignation. Why? Because he votes the right way. That is all that matters – as long as Rangel is devoted to liberalism, the liberals will pass on all his malfeasance.