Betty Ford, RIP

Mark Noonan2 Comments

From ABC:

Betty Ford, wife of former President Gerald Ford and the founder of the Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and addiction, has died at age 93.

In public, she was one of the most visible and outspoken first ladies in history. In private, she triumphed over serious personal adversity.

She was married to Gerald Ford for 58 years. Shortly after becoming president in 1974, Ford said, “I am indebted to no man and to only one woman, my dear wife.”

Ford died Friday at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., ABC News has learned. Her cause of death was not immediately clear…

God rest her soul.

Obama’s Pennsylvania Troubles

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From Public Policy Polling:

Pennsylvania is looking more and more like it could be a tough hold for Barack Obama in 2012. His approval rating in the state continues to be under water at 46/48. More voters have expressed disapproval than happiness with Obama on all three polls PPP has done in the state so far in 2011. And even though Obama took Pennsylvania by 10 points in 2008 the best he can muster right now in a head to head match up with Mitt Romney is a tie…

It is best to still rate Pennsylvania as “Lean Democrat” for the 2012 campaign – it has been a reliably blue State in Presidential politics since 1992, so we have to assume that Obama will pull it out.  This is especially true given that Democrats absolutely control the Philadelphia area and are always willing to manufacture enough votes there to counter-balance the GOP elsewhere in the State.  On the other hand, the GOP controls the Pennsylvania governorship and legislature, and that will put a damper on Democrat ability to cheat…might get caught, you know?

One thing is certain, though, is that if Obama can’t win Pennsylvania then he can’t be re-elected President of the United States.  The GOP doesn’t need the State (we can get together 285 electoral votes just by winning the same States as Bush did in 2000 thanks to population growth in the red States…heck, we can even let Obama have New Hampshire and Colorado of the Bush 2000 States and still have 272), but Obama does…and if he loses it, it means that he is likely also losing New Hampshire, Michigan and Wisconsin; in other words, for Obama to lose Pennsylvania means that he’s heading for a landslide loss.

And that is what this poll shows – Obama losing Pennsylvania.  But, don’t anyone get too excited about this.  Obama will spend a billion dollars and will leave no stone unturned to win in 2012.  It will be the hardest fought campaign in history and we can lose it, easily, if we screw up – especially if we screw up by thinking we’ve got it in the bag.  Fight, fight and then fight some more – that is what we have to do in 2012.

EPA Playing Politics With Environmental Regulations

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From the PJ Tatler:

…Just take a look at the states the EPA decided to leave off the rule change.

“The challenge from the new rule, known as the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, is that stricter limits take effect next year, giving power-plant owners little time to comply.

Texas was not included in the EPA’s draft rule related to sulfur dioxide cuts because EPA modeling had shown little downwind impact from Texas power plants on other states.

On Thursday, however, the EPA said Texas would be required to meet lower SO2 limits to avoid allowing the state to increase emissions.

Five states — Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, along with the District of Columbia — were dropped from the final EPA rule.”

Three blue states and two swing states get left off, while Texas gets added even though the EPA’s own model shows little evidence that emissions from Texas impact other states at all. Nah, there’s no politics here.

No, no politics at all – but if you need to burden Texas so that it will stop performing so well economically, then it is precisely what you need to do.  Seems that Obama and Co are quite frightened of the prospect of a Perry candidacy.

Obamunism! Unemployment at 9.2%

Mark Noonan37 Comments

From CNBC:

U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest number of workers in nine months, dousing hopes the economy would regain momentum in the second half of the year.

Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists’ expectations for a 90,000 rise.

The unemployment rate climbed to a six-month high of 9.2 percent, even as jobseekers left the labor force in droves, from 9.1 percent in May…(emphasis added)

So, if the BLS hadn’t removed as many workers from the labor force this past month, it would have shot up even higher.  I do believe the data is being manipulated – not to the point of outright lie, but to the point of getting the rosiest data possible.  After all, the number of people who leave the labor force every money is really not known – experts estimate and there are probably several sets of estimates.  My bet is that among the various estimates the BLS is pulling out those that make it look best.  Imagine how it would look otherwise – I think that unemployment would be closer to 12% right now.

Aside from that, no matter how you slice it the economy isn’t recovering.  In fact, a strong case can be made that we’re already back in to recession it just hasn’t shown in the data.  But even if we are not and will not fall in to official recession, the economy simply is not doing well.  In order to get unemployment just down to 8% by November of 2012 will take a net gain of a couple hundred thousand jobs per month between now and then…anyone out there see that happening?

In other news, a top Obama adviser is asserting that people won’t care about unemployment in 2012…

UPDATE:  From Mish – “unmitigated disaster“.

UPDATE II:  More from Mish –

…Digging deeper into the Household Survey, we see some more interesting data. In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,799,000. Yet the labor force dropped by 263,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,063,000.

Last month the labor force rose by 272,000. This month the labor force fell by 272,000. How’s that for symmetry?…

Symmetry?  More like bull.

Hezbollah in Mexico

Mark Noonan2 Comments

From PJ Tatler:

The Tucson PD didn’t put this information out in a press release. In fact, they didn’t put it out at all. The information is contained in an internal memo pilfered and released by anonymous hacker collective LulzSec. The memo dates to Sept. 2010, and notes that a man connected to  Hezbollah was caught trying to smuggle a massive cache of weapons from Mexico into New York City.

“In April of last year, the arrest of Jamal Yousef – in New York City – exposed a weapons cache of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2,500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and antitank munitions. According to Yousef, the weapons, which were being stored in Mexico, had been stolen from Iraq with the help of his cousin who was a member of Hezbollah.”…

Remember, the Islamist enemy is always trying to harm us – the destruction of the United States is the ultimate goal of the Islamists because we stand in the way of their final victory and the establishment of a Caliphate.  They will not stop until we utterly crush Islamism.  That, unfortunately, is going to be a long time from now – we’re essentially abandoning the fight (in slow stages, to be sure) in the middle east and thus the decisive victory will become ever less possible.  In my view, final victory can only come with a US army in Damascus and Tehran (and, perhaps, in Mecca) – so, no time soon.

Meanwhile, though, we do have to deal with the imminent threat of terrorist attacks upon us – and our wide open border with Mexico is the logical place for terrorists to enter our country.  We don’t control the border – not any of it, really.  The Mexican drug cartels do, and they’ll let anyone cross with anything for the right price.  Obama is claiming our border is more secure than ever – while not, perhaps, an outright falsehood (Obama could, after all, just be believing what Napolitano is telling him), it isn’t an accurate reflection of what is going on at the border.  Our failure to ensure a genuinely secure border puts us at risk of terrorist attacks on a major scale.

As I’ve been saying all along – border security comes first.  I don’t want to hear any whines about how hard it is or how much it would cost.  Whatever the difficulties and whatever the costs the job simply must be done.  This is a literal matter of life and death – and this is the primary reason we have a government:  to protect us from attack.  Failure to make the border air tight is a gross dereliction of duty on the part of the government.  And, yes, I realize that it is not all Obama’s fault – but he’s President right now and thus he responsible during his term of office – he will either do everything he can to secure the border, or he won’t…if he’s doing everything he can and we still fail, then so be it.  But right now we’re not even doing half of what we can – so any failure can be laid squarely at Obama’s door.

I don’t care if it takes a 100 foot high, electrified barbed-wire fence stretching from one end to another and a solider placed every ten feet behind the fence…whatever it takes to ensure that no one crosses our border without our permission must be done.  This is not the time to worry about race-baiting politics or adherence to ideology – people will die if we don’t secure the border; it is time to just get the job done.

 

Senator Lee Explains Constitution to Tax Cheat Tim Geithner

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Senator Lee was, of course, once a clerk for Justice Alito, so he’s probably on firm ground here.   Lee points out two very important points – only Congress can authorize debt and and the 14th Amendment requires the Secretary of the Treasury to ensure that valid US debts are paid.  What this means is that Geithner can’t exceed the debt limit while he must pay the debts as they come due even if this means that other obligations of the United States are laid aside.  As Geithner  cannot lay aside Social Security and Medicare (they are entitlements with their own funding sources, the only thing he can do if he can’t borrow to pay old debts is to take money out of discretionary spending.  This means he’ll have to pull the money out of the Departments of Commerce, Labor, Defense, Education, Energy, etc, etc, etc.

And that, my friends, is the real reason Obama wants this increase in the debt ceiling – he is afraid to show the American people that we don’t need to go further in debt and doubly afraid to show that if massive cuts are made to federal spending no one will notice.  The whole thing about Big Government is the ability to convince people that utter disaster would result without it…that if we don’t keep the money rolling right on and up and up in Big Government, people will die; kids won’t get educated, granny will eat dog food…only Big Government can rescue us from this fate worse than death!   The truth of the matter, of course, is that at least half of government spending is completely wasted.  Money we don’t need to spend but which is spent to keep people on the gravy train.  That is what Geithner will have to cut if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

I am a bit disappointed in my Congressional GOP that they do seem willing to increase the debt ceiling at some point.  I am happy that they seem to be holding very firm on no tax hikes and the need for significant cuts and spending reform…but the fact of the matter is that the debt ceiling does not need to be raised.  I believe we could educate the majority up to this if we really tried – and if we did it we’d be taking the last bit of leverage liberals have…fear that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would be catastrophic.  But, I guess we can only get so much at one time – in 2012 we’ll hopefully elect even more like Lee, and then we’ll be able to press things to an absolute conclusion.

Senator Snowe Backs Balanced Budget

Mark Noonan1 Comment

Showing exceptional GOP unity on the issue – from Politico:

No deal to raise the debt ceiling is complete without an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget to prevent Congress “from hijacking the promise of American prosperity,” two Senate Republicans are arguing as a bipartisan group of congressional leaders heads to the White House on Thursday.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) say that while deep budget cuts and caps on future spending are key to warding off “fiscal calamity,” an amendment to the Constitution forcing the federal government to spend only what it has is essential…

If there is such a thing as a “liberal Republican” these days, it is Senator Snowe.  At best, she’s only a couple steps to the right of Joe Lieberman.  But, in the end, balancing the budget is no longer an ideological issue for anyone with sense – in 2011, you are either in favor of a balanced budget or you are an idiot or you are a corrupt tool of the Ruling Class.  Pick which one you are, because those really are the three choices. Continue reading →