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If Someone Who is Bankrupt Gives You an IOU…

Mark Noonan

…would you accept it?

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) – California’s controller said on Wednesday that he would have to issue IOUs in a week if lawmakers can’t quickly solve a $24 billion budget deficit, and the state’s treasurer plans to tap a reserve fund to meet debt service costs.

The measures came as a budget crisis deepened in the most populous U.S. state and the gridlocked legislature failed to pass a proposed $11 billion in cuts.

“Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression,” Controller John Chiang said in a statement announcing that he would be forced to use IOUs to pay the state’s bills beginning on July 2.

Me, personally, I wouldn’t accept them – I’d head straight to court and demand payment in kind, if I could not receive payment in cash. Gold, silver, land, oil leases, other mineral rights…something other than a bankrupt liberal government’s promise to pay at some later date. I’m not exactly impressed with the word of the State of California – especially when they can’t cut $11 billion to make up a $24 billion shortfall…they’re so stupid they can’t even get within 40% of a balanced budget.

This is what comes from tax and spend liberalism – and it is what is coming to our national government if Obama and his Democrats aren’t stopped.

Twitter Updates for 2009-06-24

Matt Margolis

Governor Sanford, Resign

Mark Noonan

You blew it, Governor – you had position, prestige and the White House was a possibility…and you thew it all away because you couldn’t keep your oath, registered in Heaven, to be loyal to your wife – not in your heart, not in your body.

Its a hard thing, and I forgive you – but it is time for you to quit the scene. Only thus can we start to restore respectability to American politics. Those who presume to lead us must be held to a high standard – certainly while they are in office.

The Most Absurd Justification for Moral Abdication, Ever

Mark Noonan1 Comment

Showing support for Iran’s demonstrators makes you a tool of Kristol’s nefarious plot? I’ve re-read this, and I don’t think the gentleman is joking:

So folks on Twitter have been turning their avatars (little profile photos) green to show solidarity with the protesters in Iran. There are websites to help you do this. But why do this? How does it help? I want the Iranian people to live in freedom, just as I want all people to live in freedom. But the point of the gesture eludes me…

…When people feel pressure to signal, and it’s free, they’ll signal. But sending the signal creates a small emotional investment in the overt message of the signal — solidarity with opponents of the ruling Iranian regime. As every salesman knows, getting someone to make a big, costly commitment is best achieved by getting them to first make a tiny, costless commitment. The tiny, costless commitment of turning Twitter avatars green is thin edge of the persuasive edge for the neocons who would like to sell the public a war in Iran. Since I would rather not be Bill Kristol’s useful idiot, I will conspicuously leave my avatar as is, and continue hoping for the best.

And this doesn’t appear to be a kook leftist – he’s from Cato and is thus Libertarian, if not truly conservative. If he’s joking, I’d really like to hear that confirmed – to think like that is to have a whole sting of absurd ideas rattling ’round one’s brain with it all coming out as “I just want this to go away, so I can get back to issues which don’t require me to be a known as a man, or a coward”. There is a strong inclination to strenuously debate what are actually trivial issues, while leaving the central facts of our times alone, because a clear, moral decision is required. Much more safe to debate levels of taxation or health care (which is what Obama would very much prefer to talk about right now) than to discuss what one is supposed to do, as a man, when a young woman is gunned down by thugs…

And so – “I really hope the freedom fighters win”…hope, hope, hope and hope some more. With perhaps a bit of “change” thrown in, too? Where is the hope that when one is faced with the stark choice between good and evil, that one will choose good even if it appears that immediate death will result? What about the hope that the men and women of the United States Armed Forces are not the only representatives left of true, courageous humanity? We need, perhaps, a few less well-wishers and a few more doers. We certainly need far less of people who will abstain from their duty out of an alleged opposition to the supposedly nefarious machinations of, well, real men who see their duty.

House Dems Ready to Go Forward on "Soak the Poor" Climate Change Scam

Mark Noonan

And if it passes, GOP House prospects will immeasurably brighten for 2010:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote Friday on a sprawling climate-change bill, signaling the Democratic leadership’s confidence that it can overcome objections from Farm Belt Democrats.

Opponents and supporters of landmark climate legislation are ramping up their public-relations campaigns ahead of the planned vote. The Obama administration is pushing the measure as a job-creator, while critics, including many Republicans, are portraying the bill as an energy tax that could slow the economy.

Any GOPer who says it will “slow” the economy needs a stern talking to – this is an economy killer; might as well decree that we’re going to spend trillions of dollars to make ourselves rich…oh, criminy, we’ve already done that. Guess this bill makes sense in light of that…outside of Liberal Land, however, this is insane.

Go for it, Donks; we want very much for you to commit political suicide, and this will do the trick very nicely.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

Our objection to Obama and his Democrats:

But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence. – Frederic Bastiat

And, via a reader of NRO’s The Corner, a relevant quote:

Tabulae vero novae quid habent argumenti, nisi ut emas mea pecunia fundum, eum tu habeas, ego non habeam pecuniam. – Cicero

The translation given is, “What is the meaning of a ‘clean slate’, except that you purchase a farm with my money, that you still have the farm, but I no longer have my money?”

What a Real President Says About Oppressors

Mark Noonan

From a glorious American moment:

…I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct “business as usual” with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection.

We have been measured and deliberate in our reaction to the tragic events in Poland. We have not acted in haste, and the steps I will outline tonight and others we may take in the days ahead are firm, just, and reasonable…

…When 19th century Polish patriots rose against foreign oppressors, their rallying cry was, “For our freedom and yours.” Well, that motto still rings true in our time. There is a spirit of solidarity abroad in the world tonight that no physical force can crush. It crosses national boundaries and enters into the hearts of men and women everywhere. In factories, farms, and schools, in cities and towns around the globe, we the people of the Free World stand as one with our Polish brothers and sisters. Their cause is ours, and our prayers and hopes go out to them this Christmas.

Yesterday, I met in this very room with Romuald Spasowski, the distinguished former Polish Ambassador who has sought asylum in our country in protest of the suppression of his native land. He told me that one of the ways the Polish people have demonstrated their solidarity in the face of martial law is by placing lighted candles in their windows to show that the light of liberty still glows in their hearts.

Ambassador Spasowski requested that on Christmas Eve a lighted candle will burn in the White House window as a small but certain beacon of our solidarity with the Polish people. I urge all of you to do the same tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve, as a personal statement of your commitment to the steps we’re taking to support the brave people of Poland in their time of troubles.

Once, earlier in this century, an evil influence threatened that the lights were going out all over the world. Let the light of millions of candles in American homes give notice that the light of freedom is not going to be extinguished. We are blessed with a freedom and abundance denied to so many. Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solid obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers and an obligation to the children of the world, whose future will be shaped by the way we live our lives today… Ronald Reagan, December 23, 1981

We can speak out, we can be clear; we can do this without making promises we can’t keep and without inflaming the situation further…the backdrop to Reagan’s speech was the diligent, covert support to the Polish freedom fighters, letting them know that while we couldn’t come to their aid in arms, we would not forget them, nor abandon them to their fate. Their are plenty of Poles who will to this day say that Reagan’s forthright condemnation of oppression kept their spirits up and even in the darkest time – when some of them were imprisoned in the darkest dungeons – steeled them to fight on, because America was always there.

Obama is haltingly coming along towards a little courage on Iran, but even when he notes what is happening, he temporizes and still makes gutless statements about not “meddling” in Iranian affairs. We need clear, bold leadership – not timid bleats of a man unsure of himself and ignorant of the true greatness of the nation he leads.

Why Liberals Want to Shut Down the New Media

Mark Noonan

Because no one is watching the Old Media, and the left wants to have a lock on propaganda:

TVNewser has learned the CBS Evening News has once again set an all-time low last week with 4.89 million Total Viewers and 1.42 million A25-54 viewers. But it was also the lowest (since records began in the 1991-’92 season) for ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson. The Gibson program drew 6.42 million Total Viewers and 1.77 million A25-54 viewers.

Liberals, like all fascists, realize that you have to have a merciless drumbeat of endlessly repeated Big Lies in order to retain long term control of the political debate…the MSM is doing the Big Lie thing for all its worth, but no one is paying attention…thus the desire to shut down talk radio and curb internet advocacy. As the MSM craters further, look for government bail outs to be proposed and much stronger efforts to curb alternative media.