President or King?

Our President has decided he doesn't like being President; he would rather be king.

He disdains all those pesky constitutional limits, because he alone knows what is best.  He is a frightening man.

Complicit Media

There are many examples of how our national press/media has been derelict in its duty to uncover deception and hunt for truth.  One could even say that the largest media outlets have even been complicit in covering up uncomfortable facts, while perpetuating misdirection, rationalization, and actual falsehoods.

Is there, honestly, anyone who could say a Republican President would have been treated the same?

How about a President of the United States who takes pictures of himself during a public funeral for an esteemed political figure?

It is very sad for our country.

If you're lucky or persistent...

There is a sad reality in our national "mainstream" media today.  They lean so far left that they have abdicated their role as fact-checkers or reporters of truth.  The people who only listen or watch their broadcasts are sadly uninformed or purposely misinformed about reality.  One can use other resources to find information, but it requires making an effort--many don't bother.  

According to the media, only white people can be racist or commit hate crimes.  And those who are classified as "white" could change depending on the view of the media.   It's a warped view.

The media is encouraging the dumbing-down of information.  I'm seriously worried about the condition of our gene pool--it seems to be getting very shallow.

More tax frustrations

And this from the editorial of the Deseret News.  How can people argue against these facts?

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Wise Words about Fear Mongering

Charles Krauthammer is an intelligent, articulate writer who often makes lots of sense.  I'm putting his latest piece here in its entirety.

Deseret News Metro 03/03/2013, Page G02

Obama making sequester look like Armageddon WASHINGTON — “ T HE WORST-CASE SCENARIO for us,” a leading anti-budget-cuts lobbyist told The Washington Post, “is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens.” Think about that. Worst case? That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent — and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents “and nothing bad really happens.” Oh, the humanity! A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal — the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity. Or certainly should be. Otherwise, people might get the idea that we can shrink government, and live on. Hence the president’s message. If the “sequestration” — automatic spending cuts — goes into effect, the skies will fall. Plane travel jeopardized, carrier groups beached, teachers furloughed. The administration has every incentive to make the sky fall, lest we suffer that terrible calamity — cuts the nation survives. Are they threatening to pare back consultants, conferences, travel and other nonessential fluff? Hardly. It shall be air-traffic control. Meat inspection. Weather forecasting. A 2011 GAO report gave a sampling of the vastness of what could be cut, consolidated and rationalized in Washington: 44 overlapping job training programs, 18 for nutrition assistance, 82 on teacher quality, 56 dealing with financial literacy, more than 20 for homelessness, etc. Total annual cost: $100-$200 billion, about two to five times the entire domestic sequester. Are these on the chopping block? No sir. It’s firemen first. That’s the phrase coined in 1976 by legendary Washington Monthly Editor Charlie Peters to describe the way government functionaries beat back budget cuts. Dare suggest a nick in the city budget and the mayor immediately shuts down the firehouse. The DMV back office stacked with nepotistic incompetents remains intact. Shrink it and no one would notice. Sell the firetruck — the people scream and the city council falls silent about any future cuts. After all, the sequester is just one-half of 1 percent of GDP. It amounts to 1.4 cents on the dollar of nondefense spending, 2 cents overall. Because of this year’s payroll tax increase, millions of American workers have had to tighten their belts by precisely 2 percent. They found a way. Washington, spending $3.8 trillion, cannot? If so, we might as well declare bankruptcy now and save the attorneys’ fees. The problem with sequestration, of course, is that the cuts are across the board and do not allow money to move between accounts. It’s dumb because it doesn’t discriminate. Fine. Then change the law. That’s why we have a Congress. Discriminate. Prioritize. That’s why we have budgets. Except that the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed one in four years. And the White House, which proposed the sequester in the first place, had 18 months to establish rational priorities among accounts — and did nothing. When the GOP House passed an alternative that cut where the real money is — entitlement spending — President Obama threatened a veto. Meaning, he would have insisted that the sequester go into effect — the very same sequester he now tells us will bring on Armageddon. Good grief. The entire sequester would have reduced last year’s deficit from $1.33 trillion to $1.24 trillion. A fraction of a fraction. Nonetheless, insists Obama, such a cut is intolerable. It has to be “balanced” — i.e., largely replaced — by yet more taxes. Which demonstrates that, for Obama, this is not about deficit reduction, which interests him not at all. The purpose is purely political: to complete his Election Day victory by breaking the Republican opposition. At the fiscal cliff, Obama broke — and split — the Republicans on taxes. With the sequester, he intends to break them on spending. Make the cuts as painful as possible, and watch the Republicans come crawling for a “balanced” (i.e., tax hiking) deal. In the past two years, House Republicans stopped cold Obama’s left-liberal agenda. Break them now and the road is open to resume enactment of the expansive, entitlement-state liberalism that Obama proclaimed in his second inaugural address. But he cannot win if “nothing bad really happens.” Indeed, he’d look both foolish and cynical for having cried wolf. His incentive to deliberately make the most painful and socially disruptive cuts possible (say, oh, releasing illegal immigrants from detention) is enormous. And alarming. Hail Armageddon.

Believing Polls? Hardly.

I was reading today about how polls are taken.  Most of them require land phone lines and people who are willing to answer the call, and the questions.  I don't answer when I get a call (I know my mother doesn't either).  It makes me wonder just who does.

Then there is the writing of the poll questions.  They can be skewed to solicit certain kinds of responses.  After all, they are multiple choice so the choices can be whatever the poll taker wants the results to show.

Think how you would answer the old standard, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"  What if your possible responses were:  1) Recently    2) Maybe next week   3) Not yet.

The pollster could therefore state that almost all respondents were beaters, but some had stopped and a small percentage would be stopping soon.  Hardly realistic, but an accurate representation of the poll results.

Since most polls are media related, it is little wonder that they run liberal.  That's why I'm skeptical of their results.

I forgot that I'd saved an article written by Charles Krauthammer, who explains this same idea in a very clear and erudite way.  This is not the entire piece, just the paragraphs I thought were the most revealing.

Business and Obama

President Obama has had few real jobs.  He was a professor for a short time, but I know of no other real jobs.  Being a Senator or Representative is supposed to be a public service job, but it is not full time (unless you count all the time spent working to get reelected).  Community Organizing is not a job one sees advertised in the classifieds.  If he has actually worked somewhere else, no one talks about it.

So, admittedly, he knows nothing about the difficulties and rewards of creating and maintaining a business--accounts payable, receivable, capital, tax accounting, personnel, materials, organization, etc.

Even ignorance is no excuse, these same entrepreneurs paid the taxes that made everything possible.  Many of them probably worked on some of these things too.

This last comic really sums it up.  

Thinking about the next two months

I'm glad the Conventions are over, but if you watched you saw there was little doubt about the mainstream media's liberal bias.  I suppose that if you lean far left yourself, you likely thought everything was fair and normal.  The "talking heads" that felt the need to tell us what we just heard picked apart all the speakers at the Republican Convention and waxed poetic about those at the Democratic Convention.  

If the media were trying to be really fair, talking to Al Sharpton after the RNC would be countered by Rush Limbaugh at the DNC.  That would be equal treatment.

I only hope that the next two months will go quickly.  I have read that many people now get a lot of their information from the Internet and/or social media.  Maybe that is partly because they realize that most of the regular media are viewing the election from just one angle, one restrictive prospective.

I hope people will read, study, and investigate before voting.  Those who just believe the sound bites (many of which will be misleading or deceptive) are the people I worry about.

War on Women?

A short time ago, an old acquaintance wanted my support on a social site against what she called the Republican War on Women.  I respectfully declined, saying that there was no such "war," and it was just another attempt by the left to divide us.  I was supported by comments of others who I didn't even know.  This acquaintance had fallen victim to the media sound bites without doing any fact checking.  I'm afraid that happens to lots of people.


Soon thereafter, I read a piece by Charles Krauthammer that explained this divisive strategy.  It is too well-written to pick apart, so I'm posting almost all of it.  

The entire Obama campaign is a slice-and-dice operation, pandering to one group after another, particularly those that elected Obama in 2008 — blacks, Hispanics, women, young people — and for whom the thrill is now gone.

What to do? Try fear. Create division, stir resentment, by whatever means necessary — bogus court challenges, dead-end Senate bills and a forest of straw men.

Why else would the Justice Department challenge the photo ID law in Texas? To charge Republicans with seeking to disenfranchise Hispanics and blacks, of course. But in 2008 the Supreme Court upheld a similar law from Indiana. And it wasn’t close: 6-3, the majority including that venerated liberal, John Paul Stevens.

Moreover, photo IDs were recommended by the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, cochaired by Jimmy Carter. And you surely can’t get into the attorney general’s building without one. Are Stevens, Carter and Eric Holder anti-Hispanic and anti-black?

The ethnic bases covered, we proceed to the “war on women.”

It sprang to public notice when a 30-year-old student at an elite law school (starting private-sector salary upon graduation: $160,000) was denied the inalienable right to have the rest of the citizenry (as coinsured and/or taxpayers — median household income: $52,000) pay for her contraception.

Despite a temporary setback — Hilary Rosen’s hastily surrendered war on moms — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will resume the battle with a Paycheck Fairness Act that practically encourages frivolous lawsuits and has zero chance of passage.No matter. Its sole purpose is to keep the war-on-women theme going, while the equally just-for-show Buffett Rule, nicely pitting the 99 percent versus the 1 percent, is a clever bit of class warfare designed to let Democrats play tribune of the middle class.

Ethnicity, race, gender, class. One more box to check: the young. Just four years ago, they swooned in the aisles for Obama. No longer. Not when 54 percent of college graduates under 25 are unemployed or underemployed.

How to shake them from their lethargy? Fear again. Tell them, as Obama repeatedly does, that Paul Ryan’s budget would cut Pell Grants by $1,000 each, if his domestic cuts were evenly distributed. (They are not evenly distributed, making the charge a fabrication. But a great applause line.) Then warn that Republicans would double the interest rate on student loans. Well, first, Mitt Romney has said he would keep them right where they are. Second, as The Washington Post points out, this is nothing but a recycled campaign gimmick from 2006 when Democrats advocated (and later passed) a 50 percent rate cut that gratuitously squanders student aid by subsidizing the wealthy as well as the needy. For Obama, what’s not to like?

More beneficiaries, more votes.

What else to run on with 1.7 percent GDP growth (2011), record long-term joblessness and record 8 percent-plus unemployment (38 consecutive months, as of this writing)? Slice and dice, group against group.

There is a problem, however. It makes a mockery of Obama’s pose as the great transcender, uniter, healer of divisions. This is the man who sprang from nowhere with that thrilling 2004 convention speech declaring that there is “not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

That was then. Today, we are just sects with quarrels — to be exploited for political advantage. And Obama is just the man to fulfill Al Gore’s famous mistranslation of our national motto: Out of one, many. 

Thinking about taxes

Thinking about taxes.  After all, it's April.  I heard someone suggest once that every citizen should get a vote in an election, but in addition, those who pay income taxes should get an additional vote for each specified amount of taxes paid.  I think it's an idea that has value.  But then, I'm one of those people who also thinks voters should have to show proper identification too.

There was a good article about the economics of our current level of deficit spending.  The last few paragraphs are worth reading.  Especially since the President is trying so hard to make people angry with those who have managed to be successful.



There are far too many people who don't want their handouts to stop.  Having a job is much harder.

Disturbing misogyny

A number of things in the presidential race media coverage have struck me. There are two that I found particularly annoying.

First, the double standard of an already disturbing misogyny. A conservative radio personality reacted to a D.C. college student's complaint that she needed help paying for birth control. He called her a slut.

Okay, I don't know much about that student--and I suppose neither did he--so the name calling was unacceptable. I guess he has since apologized, but the liberals and their accompanying media went nuts. As though they had no idea he ever said anything controversial.

Then something really interesting happened. A liberal woman wrote a column saying that the liberal left was just as bad--maybe worse--at misogyny and racism. She named names and gave examples. A news commentator/entertainer has repeatedly demeaned Hilary Clinton, referring to her as a "she devil," "Nurse Ratched," and "witchy," among other things. A liberal radio personality said Sarah Palin "set off a bimbo alert" and called Laura Ingraham "a right-wing slut." Another (whose name you would recognize) said that a conservative commentator "should have been aborted by her parents." The same man called Michelle Malkin "a mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick" and thought it appropriate to discuss Carrie Prejean's breasts on his MSNBC show.

I pulled a paragraph from her article:

But the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC. Maher has called Palin a “dumb twat” and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job. Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, “Don't show me your tits!” as though a woman feeding her child is trying to flash Maher. (Here’s a way to solve his problem: don’t stare at a strangers’ breasts). Then, his coup de grâce: “And by the way, there is a place where breasts and food do go together. It’s called Hooters!”

The author of the article is Kirsten Powers. You can look the whole thing up if you are interested.

I wonder if these men say these things about their wives and daughters. I also wonder why there is so much difference in the reaction of those who hear it. When is it ever okay to debase women just because they are female?

My second annoyance will have to wait until my next post. This is enough for one day.

Going to hate this year!

I am going to hate this year. Election years are always filled to overflowing with political rhetoric, accusations, information spinning, misleading and downright false statements. It frightens me that there are vast numbers of people who believe the sound bites and empty promises.

There was an article that stated that if some tax policy was changed, a family making $20,000 a year would see their taxes go up by 60%. But, in reality, a family like that is paying no income tax. They are likely getting the earned income credit--a "refund" of money paid by someone else. 60% of nothing is still nothing. The article was purposely misleading to promote an agenda.

The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. I believe Thomas Sowell pointed out that the left considers it to be "materialistic" and "greedy" to want to keep what you have earned. But it is "idealistic" to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.

If someone benefits from a hamburger, clothes, an education, a house, who should be forced to pay for it? I agree with Mr. Sowell that the only morally correct answer is that the person who receives the benefit should pay for it. Unless we are thieves who only care only about our immediate enjoyment, and who pays is irrelevant. One of our country's problems is too many Americans want to benefit from things for which they expect other Americans to be taxed.

The French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) said, "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." He is as correct today as he was 150 years ago.

Tired of the Occupiers.

I am tired--no I am very tired--of the media's coverage of the silly antics of young people with nothing more productive to do than camp out in a public place and complain about their lot in life.

These "99 percenters" have tents, sleeping bags, money for food, cell phones, cameras, and nearby sanitation facilities. How do they think all that came about? I took this quote from an article, sadly I don't remember just where. It does make some good points about the silliness of the occupiers.

Protesters don't really have a coherent message except they seem to want what someone else has earned. They feel entitled to more somehow. Why? Yes, some of them took out loans to attend college. So what? No one required them to. They could have worked their way through like lots of us did. But loans were easier. Oh, I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

The media tries to compare the "occupy" movement with what they called the Tea Party. There is little in common. The occupy protesters are just entitled young people who feel like they should have more possessions and less debt, but don't know what to do about it. I have a few ideas, but they wouldn't want to hear them. These ideas would involve responsibility, sacrifice, and work (perhaps for less money than they "deserve" for a while). Maybe they could earn enough to pay a few income taxes. ICK.
The Tea Party had well-specified goals: small government, less intrusion into private lives, lower taxes. But the media tried very hard to diminish coverage and vilify citizens attending meetings supporting those goals.

I'm wondering how long this self-indulgent foolishness will continue when the weather gets seriously wet and cold. Maybe all these "dedicated" campers will find it uncomfortable enough to go back to their dry and heated homes.

With the exception of some "reality show celebrities," and I use the word celebrities very loosely, and the rare people who are born into wealthy families, those with a lot of money worked very long and hard for it. I guess that idea doesn't appeal to everyone.

Obama failures just keep coming.

President Obama continues to pander to his radically liberal base while showing little concern about the welfare of the people of the United States. His focus is solidly in promoting sound bites of policies with no real substance and trying mightily to incite the class envy the believes will get him reelected. A couple of recent articles in the Morning Bell highlight some very real concerns.

But, as with so many other ideas, the song changed once he was elected.

David Brooks, a columnist for the notoriously liberal New York Times, wrote a piece calling himself an "Obama Sap." He mentioned the many times he had high hopes for something President Obama said or did, only to be disappointed in the truth of the man's actions. I wonder if there are other Obama saps out there. I'll bet there are.

Borrowing a good comic strip

This Non Sequitur comic appealed to me because of the liberals in government and their continued belief that increasing taxes will provide them with money to solve problems.

An op ed piece in the newspaper today made this even clearer:

Government intervention may look good to the media but its actual track record-- both today and in the 1930s--is far worse than the track record of letting the economy recover on its own.

Americans today are alarmed that unemployment has stayed around 9 percent for so long. But such unemployment rates have been common for years in Western European welfare states that have followed policies similar to policies being followed currently by the Obama Administration.

These European welfare states have not only used the taxpayers' money to hand out "free" benefits to particular groups, they have mandated that employers do the same. Faced with higher labor costs, employers have hired less labor.

Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute, Stanford University

Taking money from people who earned it, filtered through the government, to give to those who have done nothing to earn it does not work. Never has, never will. But apparently it is a theory that liberals are not willing to give up on.

Wisdom from Abraham Lincoln

I found a paper with quotes from Abraham Lincoln, and I think they are very applicable today. I also believe that President Obama and the liberals in power are trying to do exactly what Lincoln warned against.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away initiative and independence.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Abraham Lincoln

Disregard reality

The main stream media's reporting about the on-going budget "talks" in Washington is canted toward the left, so it is important to find articles that lean the other direction. Thomas Sowell makes some valuable points:

So much of the political candidates are about the quick and easy slogans, whether or not the candidate even means or believes them. President Obama himself was a master in 2008. Let's try and find some truth.

Wait, the government got less tax money when the top income tax bracket was 73 percent? Why confuse the voters with truth? Talking points are used in discussions of government-controlled health care, gun control, rent control, welfare, and many other programs while reality is ignored.

Budgets, Presidents, and big debt.

Budgets have been in the news for months, and while regular folks continue to wrestle with their own finances, our President just pretends he understands the concepts. He and the liberal progressives seem to believe that everything will be fixed by more money--other people's money.

There was an excellent op-ed piece written nearly two months ago by Jay Ambrose. President Obama had just given a speech. I may have to copy nearly all of it, since I can't decide what to leave out. The title is "Obama's speech was Hyperbolic, Irresponsible." In his words, the speech "...was nastily, absurdly partisan..." He said it was "...irresponsible, dishonest, ideologically nutty..." Wasn't Obama supposed to be better than this?

It is an old trick. There aren't enough of the very well-off to make a difference in the polls or voting, and since many other voters resent their wealth it's easy to pick on them. But beware, when enough has been taken from those who invest and operate businesses that their growth stops, the middle class is next.

That is not the county I grew up in. I miss it.

So much to say!

One reason I've been so slow getting up a new post is there is so much to talk about--where do I begin? Maybe since we just paid our tax bill, and our first quarterly payment for this year, I'll rant a bit about the liberal notion that they should be able to spend even more of the money we earn.

Thomas Sowell discussed the "no tax cuts for the rich" idea back in early December.

Another problem is the definition of "the rich." The term is used by the left as a way to encourage envy by the voters who wish they were. Who is "rich?" According to President Obama, any couple earning more than $250,000 a year. The problem is that includes most of the small business owners, who are the economic backbone of our country.

Walter Williams explains the problem with this notion:

Compounding this fuzzy thinking is the fact that nearly 50% of Americans pay NO income taxes. Who is left? Regular, hard-working people who have spent the time, energy, and thought to building their financial houses.

I heard a radical idea once and I'm sorry I don't remember where. What if everyone got one vote, then people who pay income taxes got an additional vote for each certain amount they paid in? Seems very fair to me.