Blogs For Victory

From Reuters:

Non-farm productivity fell for the first time in 1-1/2 years during the second quarter and labor costs barely edged up, according to a Labor Department report on Tuesday that underlined a slowing pace of economic recovery.

Productivity declined by an annual rate of 0.9 percent after rising at a revised 3.9 percent rate in the first quarter, the first time since the fourth quarter of 2008 that output per worker fell…

Just another indicator that the recovery has faltered – the only question now for most people is, will we slip back in to full blown recession? For people like me, the answer to that is, “no”. That is because people like me figure we never really left the recession to begin with.

Meanwhile, for people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama, the answer is, “cripes! Spend another trillion! Bound to be a different result, eventually, if we just keep doing the same thing!”.

Sharron Angle reminds us that once upon a time, Reid had a different opinion:

This is just the way Democrat leaders are, boys and girls. You genuinely anti-war liberals out there should pay close attention – realize that Democrat support for your position was only valid as long as a Republican was in office. If you want to be anti-war, that’s just fine – but remember that Democrats were just using you to make a narrow, partisan political point.

From Kaus (a Democrat, by the way) – Democrats running away from what they thought would be their signature issue:

Democrats’ talking points for summer campaigning don’t even mention health care reform. Wow. … I’m still in favor of the bill that passed. It’s a historic achievement. (We can fix it later if necessary.) But what does it say about the President’s salesmanship that his party doesn’t dare bring up what he spent the first half of his term accomplishing? …

Ramming it through seems to have worked out badly, huh?

Our job, as Republicans, is to just keep reminding the people of what the Democrats have done – they did ObamaCare; they did Stimulus; they botched the oil spill response; they are suing Arizona…just keep hammering them with their own actions. They are unpopular and trying to hide – turn the lights on ’em and watch them scatter!

From the Wall Street Journal:

…Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.

Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers’ comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally’s Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally’s pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally’s job each year…

Government imposes huge costs on employment – the higher the cost of employment, the fewer employees businesses will hire. It is really just as simple as that. There are plenty of employees available – companies could go on a hiring bonanza, except that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits in a down economy.

Now, here’s the part liberals really don’t get – if you lower the cost of hiring people, then people will be hired. This is done by what liberals call “tax cuts for the wealthy”, but which are actually “cost cuts for employment”. Do you buy as much gas when its $4 a gallon as you do when its $2? Of course not – but liberals seem incapable of grasping this concept.

In order to get employment moving again at lot of things need to be done. We need to work on our regulatory system to open up more prospects of farming, mining and manufacturing – the basics of economic activity. We need to encourage savings and investment. We need to clear out the mass of illegals which clog both the lower end of employment (you guys seen the unemployment rate among teens these days?) as well as the welfare rolls. And, of course, we need to lower the cost of hiring people.

This isn’t rocket science. Liberals are trying to sell us on the notion that the “new normal” is structurally high unemployment. They are ok with this because the “new normal” leaves them in charge (and quite wealthy, it should be noted) – but the rest of us don’t have to put up with this liberal nonsense. All we need is a change of government and we can start to work.

Its almost as if they are trying to scare us: Vote Republican and we’ll do our worst!

Carol Browner, the White House’s top energy and environmental adviser, refused on Sunday to shut the door on passing climate change legislation this year — even though Senate Democratic leaders have conceded they lack the votes and have punted on the volatile issue.

Browner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President Barack Obama is still committed to pushing the bill through the Senate, and that there was “potential” for the bill to come up in a post-election, lame-duck session of Congress…

Careful there, Ms. Browner, you don’t want to spark a revolution – and trying to ram through Congress a series of bills which were essentially just rejected by the voters would cause a wave of outrage and revulsion in the United States. Wait for the votes to be cast – if Democrats retain a full Congressional majority, then no harm/no foul in using a lame duck session…but if either or both houses go GOP, then in propriety no major issue should be taken up until the new Congress is sworn in.

This seems to becoming an issue – and the left appears to be gleefully latching on to it on the theory that they can paint conservatives as racist over it: modify the 14th Amendment in order to prevent the children of illegal immigrants from obtaining automatic American citizenship. It all stems from this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside…

This amendment, ratified in 1868, was designed to prevent any State from denying citizenship to any freed slaves, or their children. It was a wise and necessary amendment – but it also does need to be modified.

Back when it was enacted, it took a couple weeks to get from Europe to the United States – longer to get from any other overseas area. And even traveling 50 miles to the United States from inside Mexico was an arduous, lengthy and expensive task – especially for any woman who was expecting a child. So, the problem of illegal immigrants giving birth in the United States simply wasn’t even a problem. Heck, it wasn’t even a concept.

Times have changed. You can get to the United States from pretty much anywhere in the world within 24 hours – and in great comfort and with readily accessible medical care along the way. There is just no bar to coming here – as long as you don’t get caught at the border (and most don’t), your only problem is deciding just where to have the baby inside the United States. And, once born, that child is an American citizen – no doubt about it and fully within the protections of the United States constitution.

What we are seeing because of this is a rising number of women coming to the United States for the express purpose of giving birth here. Their child is thus an American and eligible for all aid any other American child can obtain – and, of course, having an American citizen child makes it more likely you’ll be able to stay in country, should the authorities ever question your residency status. This is not what the 14th amendment was intended to do – it was intended to secure basic rights, it has become a vehicle for special privileges.

The logical thing to do is change it like so:

All persons born to at least one citizen of the United States or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside…

Neat and simple and solves the problem. Enact this, and women who are pregnant will stop coming because there will be no purpose in doing so.

Our liberals, of course, will still try to play this as racist. Their plan would be to make the concept so hateful that GOPers would run screaming away from it and liberals would reap the electoral benefit. It wouldn’t, however, work out that way – this will be another one of those things of late (like the Arizona law) where once people learn the provisions, support for it will be overwhelming. Liberals try to play the race card on this and it will blow right up in their faces.

What this debate will do is firmly illustrate just how deformed our political debate has become. Rather than seeing an issue and coming to a swift and rational resolution of same, everything has to be ground up in the liberal propaganda machine. We can’t just argue about things – liberals insist that hatred and division be sown and that all problems become a crisis. Fortunately, the liberal MO is rapidly running out of steam – as more and more people realize just what liberalism has been up to, the more likely it becomes that liberalism will suffer a crushing defeat at the polls.

And that is what needs to happen. In order to start America on the path to recovery, it is required that liberalism be crushed. Liberalism has become a problem – and the major problem, because unless liberalism is out of the way, no other problems can be resolved. Issues like this will play in to the destruction of liberalism, and so we should press them with full vigor.

Larry Kudlow lays out some possibilities – all of them bad:

…Already there are rumors of an August surprise (to use the phrase of business columnist Jimmy Pethokoukis) where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forgive underwater mortgages held by millions of Americans. And with state and local government jobs having fallen 169,000 year-to-date, perhaps the Democratic Congress and the White House will seek an even bigger spending plan for teachers and Medicaid workers — on top of the $26 billion plan that just passed the Senate.

Or maybe the Democrats will come up with a new infrastructure-spending bill, perhaps for green technologies and whatnot. Or maybe they’ll extend unemployment benefits even more. My liberal friend Robert Reich is even talking up the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), where the government employed millions during the 1930s…

All of which is possible for two reasons:

1. Democrats haven’t figured out that the Keynesian economic model is flat wrong. It doesn’t work – it can’t work; you can’t print, borrow and spend your way in to wealth. But, Democrats remain wedded to it.

2. Democrats don’t conceive of any policy move which doesn’t have them dispensing taxpayer money in return for votes. If there isn’t an immediate and direct benefit to Democrats, why do it?

So, the sort of policies which would save the day – even at this late a date – simply won’t be tried. And thus we’re stuck with the very real prospect of the Democrats doing all or some of what is listed above – and all of that would simply make matters worse.

Fundamentally, only a change of government can allow us to start the economic recovery – Step One in that comes in November, but it must be kept in mind that the actual levers of power will remain in Obama’s hands until at least January 20th, 2013. This could get very ugly.

Victor Davis Hanson notes just where the cretins currently ruling our nation came from:

…The present symptoms that characterize both our popular culture and current governance — shrill self-righteousness; abstract communalism juxtaposed with concrete pursuit of the aristocratic good life; race/class/gender cosmic sermonizing with private school and Ivy league for the kids; crass and tasteless public expression; a serial inability to take responsibility for one’s actions; the bipartisan mega-deficits; the inability to cut pensions and social security for the baby boomers — from the trivial to the fundamental, all derive from a bankrupt cohort that came of age in the sixties and seventies.

…Yes, one walk across the Yale or Stanford campus circa 1975, and one could see pretty clearly what sort of culture that bunch would create when it came of age and was handed power. If that is reductionism, so be it.

It will take a revolution to get these people out of office. Fortunately, they are pretty clueless about what is going on and that will help us.

First game is today – Dallas at Cincinnati, at 8pm eastern. And it is about time that we finally get some real sports back on TV. Sorry, baseball. Too bad, basketball. Are you kidding, soccer? Football is coming back to town!

Of course, all discussions of the teams chances are moot as we all know that the Chargers will romp to an undefeated season ending with a crushing Super Bowl victory over whatever hapless team gets to play victim. But, if you really think your non-Charger team might have a chance to at least make a game of it in the Super Bowl, then feel free to discuss your pathetic, little hopes.

Looks like it would be the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Given the six-digit salaries these folks are pulling down for their never-ending battle against “hate” (however they choose to define it), it’s pretty obvious that Santa is very good to them every year.

It’s also curious that the world’s leading civil rights organization can’t seem to find a single minority whom they consider to be worthy of a top management position…

Race is just a tool for the left – they aren’t interested in equality so much as interested in tearing down the United States and its institutions. The goal is not freedom and equality on the left, but a leftist government – always good to keep that in mind when you hear them yammer on about “hate” or “racism”.