This is pure cowardly Obama. Over on the White House site, you can read the summary of the goodies. But when it gets to the part of paying for it, hahaha. That’s to come “later”.

Well, later for everybody who doesn’t know how to google up things. Here’s the text of the bill:

Also known as the “Obama Knows You’re A Bunch Of Rubes Act of 2011″

The tax increases are in Title IV, which starts around page 134-ish. Basically, it’s Obamunist class warfare on everybody making $125k (for married filing separately) or better.

From what I can tell, and I’m not a tax attorney (and you need to be one to read this gobbledygook pile of crap), ALL deductions are limited if you’re in the upper income bracket defined there. It looks like you’d get a nice haircut on your deductions including your mortgage. All without bracket relief. Gotta love that Obama.

It’s also got a lot of “The Secretary Shalls” in it, which is Obamaspeak for “We’ll make up the rules as we go along”. Obama needs a little Colonel’s outfit and some Idi Amin dark sunglasses. He’d be right at home running some South American banana republic.

The act also repeals tax breaks for new oil and gas drilling. The beat goes on. That’s in Subtitle D.

The other interesting thing is that the tax increases DO go into effect AND the Joint Committe is supposed to come up with $450 billion in new “deficit reduction”, which in Obamaspeak means more taxes. So he’s raising taxes by $450 billion with this act and then it also forces the joint committe to either cut spending (LOL) or raise taxes by another $450 billion.

A couple of other things:

*As far as I can tell, this bill is just like Porkulus I: A wealth transfer from the upper middle class to the construction unions. It’s got the usual state subsidies in there so the teacher’s unions stay funded.
*If you’re near AMT territory now, this bill ensures you will be smack in the middle of it as your deductions get whacked. This will force thousands more people into the AMT adders, and their tax bills will SKYROCKET from that.
*It also has some great perverse incentives. “Work sharing” will go into effect. Let’s say you’re sick of the 8 to 5 grind. Well, has Obama got a deal for you! Instead of getting laid off, you can voluntarily reduce your hours *and* have the feds pay you partial unemployment. The best of both worlds! Tell your boss, “Smell ya later!” at 12 noon and hit the beach for some waves. But still go to the bank and get paid for a full day. What’s not to love?!

*Here’s the thing about the SuperCommittee: We all know they’re never going to agree to just cut $1.5T in spending.  Oh, no.  There WILL be new taxes out of this.  By upping the ceiling by ANOTHER half a trillion, Obama figures he can wring even more taxes out of folks without anyone really tying it to him.  Because if the SC can’t agree, then the automatic triggers for defense and Medicare provider cuts kick in…and the GOP gets the blame.

Also, read Section 366 on the “Career Academies” and other assorted pork in the bill. You’ll love it.

David Axelrod gave away the game this morning by declaring that there will be no negotiations on the bill (Hat tip to HotAir): Axelrod speaketh

“We’re not in a negotiation to break up the package. It’s not an à la carte menu. It’s a strategy to get this country moving,” Axelrod said Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“The president has a package; the package works together. We need to do many things to get this economy moving,” Axelrod said.

So in other words, you can stuff bipartisan compromise.  We want to have our cake and eat it, too.  And we want you to swallow this tax-and-transfer payola scheme so we can get kickbacks to the democrat party via all the unions we’re going to fund with taxpayer dollars.
GOP:  Circular-file this bill the second it shows up.  Most. Dishonest. President. Ever.

Kleiner Perkins, a well know venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, has put together an incredible report on the state of the budget and our finances in general.  You can read the .pdf here:

http://images.businessweek.com/mz/11/10/1110_mz_49meekerusainc.pdf

The total document is like a book consisting of Power Point slides.  You just have to see it all to comprehend the work that went into it.  Some data tidbits:

*If you take out the underfunded entitlement spending, the US would have run a budget surplus 9 out of the last 15 years
*For the Reagan haters:
Revenue as a % of GDP in 1980: 19%
Revenue as a % of GDP in 1900: 18% <— flat to down.

Outlays as a % of GDP in 1980: 22%
Outlays as a % of GDP in 1990: 22% <— flat
*Current tax rates, counting social taxes + individual income taxes, are at 12% of GDP, or at about 1970-era levels. At the start of the Bush43 Presidency, 2000, they were at 17%, a historical record. <— Take further note.

*Corporate income taxes are about the same as the 1980s, when you account for the relatively crappy economic conditions

*Defense speding as a % of GDP is at 1950 levels. Its all time high was in 1960. <— take note, abusers of the Eisenhower quote.

*Entitlement spending, both Social Security and Healthcare, are at all-time historical highs.

*Overhead is 40% of defense spending, and the report notes that the Deficit Commission found some $300B in cuts (over time) that could be made there. No private firm would act this way.

*The SS trust fund is merely a pile of T-bonds. So in other words, we owe ourselves interest on all that money. That bill comes due in ~2017, at which time we’ll be hammered with interest payments.
*Entitlement spending is up 169% over the last 15 years, while dedicated funding for it is only up 70%
*Social Security and unimployment insurance have more or less broken even until about now.
*Medicaid has ALWAYS operated in the red, averaging about $160B or so
*Medicare has ALWAYS operated in the red, averaging about $123B or so

This bullet point really tells the story:

Dedicated funding for SS and Medicare/caid in 2010: $0.87T
Dedicated outlays for SS and Medicare/caid in 2010: $1.98T

That’s just amazing.

Another biggie:
*In 1962, SS provided 32% of a retiree’s income. Now it’s 37%.

*When Medicaid was created in 1965, 1 in 50 Americans received coverage. Now it’s 1 in 6.
*Total government spending on health care (federal + state + local) is up 7x since 1960, from 1.2% of GDP to 8.2% today

Another tidbit:
*Consumer out of pocket total spending decreased from 47% in 1960 to 12% today
*Our healthcare spending is 3X other OECD nations, yet we’re near the bottom in many health indicator categories
*Medicare Part D actually cost LESS than expected – projection was for $111 billion annually, so far only $61B/year. Two reasons: 25% less uptake by seniors and partial outsourcing to private industry, who found ways to cut costs. (Looks like the savings is split fairly evenly between both)

I think this report should be required reading for anyone who wants to have a conversation about the budget.  This stuff is just too important not to be armed with the right data.

We’re going to see and hear a lot on Tuesday and Wednesday as the votes against leftism pile up.  We’re going to hear about a racist voter base, Fox News drumming up fear, how stupid the voters are, anxious, fearful, etc.  We’re going to hear how foreign money poured in to the Chamber of Commerce and “if it weren’t for that, we would’ve been just fine”. 

In short, we’re going to hear everything from them except honesty.  No objective criticism of the approach they’ve taken.  No self-analysis of a set of positions that maybe, just maybe went too far.  No thoughtfulness on the wisdom of a strategy where they call the nation’s voters a bunch of morons.  No questioning of a strategy to use a sexual term on the largest grassroots political movement ever.

Nah, none of that stuff.  The voters are voting against The One, so they must be straying from the reservation.

Know what I say?  Good.  Here’s to all the liberals doubling down on the offensive rhetoric.  Here’s to all of them continuing to Not. Get. It.  In every horror movie you can never knock out the monster with the first shot – it always takes some resolve and a number of hammer blows to stop the slasher killer zombie. And it could go either way – the good guys don’t always win.

Well, politically, we’re about to deal a hammer blow to the left on Tuesday.  And we have a chance to end this political horror movie in November of 2012.  The leftists will do their part by contuining to be smug and insult/belittle the rest of us.  Good for them.  Let’s do our part by keeping up the energy and voting the rest of them out in 2012.

So everywhere I go I see Howard Dean and various members of the nutroots contingent out there bashing ObamunistCare. Their primary objections is that there’s no public option and that this is a big giveaway to the insurance industry. You can see this theme echoed (who would have thought?) amongst the  “intelligentsia”.

Let’s take a second and tear this down. First, let’s all have a good belly laugh at the possibility that they’re being serious: Hahahahahaha! There’s just about zero chance that these people WON’T eventually throw their support behind the bill, and here’s why.

First of all, liberals lie. You can’t spell liberal without L, I, and E and this is just the latest example. When this abomination gets into committee, out will come the Stupak amendment and in will go the public option and out will go the protections against illegals gaming the system. Voila, there you go. That will be the point where they see the light. Even if they only get 1 or none of the 3, they’ll still jump on board.

Why? They’ve shown in the past that principles are…fluid. Remember how getting out of Iraq NOW was their #1 issue? That lasted up until their Messiah got his first real briefing on the logistics of doing so and the results of such an action. All of a sudden, immediately pulling out of Iraq wasn’t so much of a big priority anymore, because Obama isn’t an idiot. The nutroots people aren’t, either. By them I mean the ones who actually write the blogs (the people who read them and swear by them are another matter). They know that if Obama suddenly changed his tune that there must have been something to what Bush was saying all those years. So they quietly dropped the issue and didn’t raise a peep when Obama doubled down on Afghanistan.

They’ll do the same here. They know two things:

1. 1. If they keep banging the drum against this bill, its popularity will only fall, and that will help the GOP in 2010. A GOP Congress means more of their socialist agenda goes by the wayside. The democrats are nothing if not practical.
2. They know that the people who read their blogs will ultimately not question their POV, so no matter what they post, ultimately your average lib on the street will follow along. Where else are these people going to go, even if they were inclined to? We’ve seen with the Tea Parties that the conservative on the street isn’t afraid to tell the GOP what to do with itself. I strongly doubt that the average lib on the street has the intestinal fortitude to do the same (Nader is not a good example – they thought Gore would destroy Bush in 2000).

There you have it. I don’t take Howard Dean nor the posts by liberals claiming to be in opposition to ObamunistCare seriously, and neither should you. It’s just another scam they’re running.

Or, “How to Earn Better Than 100% On Your Money”

I really have to hand it to Obama.  I underestimated his shrewdness.

Back when the bailout debate was going on, just about everybody who ever even heard of a balance sheet knew that GM and Chrysler were headed for the toilet.  No amount of federal money was going to keep both firms out of Chapter 11.

So don’t do the bailout, the call went.  Don’t throw taxpayers’ money into a hole from which it’ll never emerge.

But you and I were thinking like rational investers.  We had notions like “Return on Investment” in mind.

But Obama thinks differently.  He thinks like a community organizer.  He also thinks about the mission:  Return the nation’s wealth to its rightful owners.  Or, in terms that he himself has used in the past, bring about “redistributive change”.

So if you’re a big-time community organizer and you want to redistribute some wealth at GM or Chrysler, what do you do…well, you know you need a seat at the table to make that happen.  What better way than to have the American Taxpayer pour in a lot of cash and buy your way in for you? 

That way, you get to impose your mathematics of redistributive change all you want:

Bondholders in Chrysler take a hugehaircut.  The union gets control.
Bondgolders in GM get told, “Our way or the zero-value highway”.  The union and their health care plans rule.

But, hey!  Gettlefinger DID in fact make a sacrifice:

From the WSJ:

That’s an improvement on the government’s earlier offer, but it’s a far cry from what the Administration offered the United Automobile Workers for their $20 billion in claims. Assuming the UAW ratifies a new labor agreement, which its locals were voting on Thursday, the union’s retiree benefit trust will receive $10 billion in cash, $6.5 billion in preferred stock paying a 9% dividend, $2.5 billion in debt, 17.5% of the new company and warrants to buy another 2.5% in five years, albeit at a steep price. In exchange, the UAW will accept more flexibility in work rules, and retirees will have to give up prescription-drug coverage for their Viagra and Cialis. Seriously.

Let’s do the math:  For a $20B investment, the UAW gets…

$10 billion in cash
$6.5 billion in stock equity
A NINE PERCENT dividend on the above stock (I’ll do the NPV later on that one, but on the back of an evelope it looks like another $12 BILLION)
$2.5 billion in debt (one assumes they’re being paid interest, too)
17.5% of the company AND the ability to buy 2.5% more later.

So the UAW, for their $20B investment is getting $16.5 billion in liquid equity up front, and a 9% dividend ($585 miilion per year in perpetuity.  That’s 82.5 cents on the dollar right there, not counting the dividend.

They get this AND 17.5% of the company.  And some debt with another interest payment attached to it.  In other words, the UAW just got greater than a 100% return on their money.

The bondholders?  They got the shaft.

Welcome to Obama’s America.  Bend over.

So sayeth The One at Notre Dame today:

Speech at ND:

I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away,” Obama said in a commencement address. “Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.”

“Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction,” Obama added. “But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”
He called for a new, more respectful tone on the issue, marked by “open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words.”

Oh, please.  This from a guy whose side of the political aisle follows Rules For Radicals so well that they’ve practically invented a cottage industry around demonizing, patronizing, and making light of its opposition, no matter how low they have to stoop.  Too bad Barry didn’t have this in mind when he was slapping his sides laughing at Rush Limbaugh being the 20th hijacker, what?  A week ago?

So allow me to translate what Obama is saying above to all you Pro-lifers:  Don’t say bad things to the other side.  Listen to them call you names and make fun of your religious beliefs.  Also listen to them spout their platitudes while telling you how stupid and old-fashioned you are.

In the meantime, Barry and his crew will continue their 24/7 ridicule of their opposition.  Just don’t you guys say anything that might make for an uncomfortable campaign issue, Mmmmkay?  Later on down the piece you can see an example of Barry’s hypocrisy on the issue with his own website.  Barry even cited his own lack of adherence to the central theme of his address to help make his own point.  I’m hoping the good graduates of Notre Dame were able to pick up on Mr. Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do.

Buried at the bottom of the AP article is this gem:

“This tradition of cooperation and understanding is one that I learned in my own life many years ago – also with the help of the Catholic Church,” Obama said before elaborating on his work with Catholic churches as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago.

“It was through this service that I was brought to Christ,” Obama said.

So Father Pfleger was the guy that helped him see The Light after all.  No need for further comment.

GDP falls much harder than expected:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The U.S. economy shrank at an annual pace of 6.1% in the first quarter — almost as much as it did in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a government report Wednesday.

The drop was much worse than expected. According to economists surveyed by Briefing.com, expectations were for a drop of 4.7% in gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s economic activity.

The stimulus bill was supposed to be immediate relief for the GDP contraction. Being fair, it was passed in February and only had ~6 weeks to do something. But what does that tell us about this particular bill (note to trolls and other arguers of dishonesty: you have to say, “This bill”)?

The stim bill could’ve kept the F-22 line going…and kept 92,000+ employed for the near future. Nope. The stim bill could have cut corp taxes (my idea was to cut the taxes on bond interest and proceeds from sales to zero, which would have seriously goosed corporate lending and led to a bull market in bonds almost overnight), but it didn’t.

Instead, porkulus focused on creating a new gov bureaucracy around health care monitoring and some construction. The first stimulus money to be spent in the state of Washington will be a 2-lane bridge to Microsoft. Will this have an economic impact similar to say, replacing the Hwy 520 floating bridge or the downtown viaduct? Uhhh, no.

The arguments agains the stim bill and many of the bailouts were that the cash infusions would either (1) not work quickly enough or (2) just wallpaper over problems. In the case of porkulus, it looks like any adjustment in GDP won’t be felt until Q2 or maybe even Q3. How many more jobs will be lost by then?

In the case of the bailouts, Chrysler and GM have managed to burn billion$ and are still headed towards Chapter 11 and/or a fire sale of their assets. How’d that work out?

Some D.C. bipartisanship might have given us a better bill, albeit a few weeks later that might have done some good…but thanks to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President “I won”, we’ll never know.

So the liberals and their media allies have taken to calling the Tea Parties ‘teabagging’ in an obvious attempt at innuendo.

Well, cool. What, did any of you expect to get asked why people are out marching today? Did anyone really expect an honest inquiry as to why so many folks are upset? Uhhh, no. Wasn’t ever going to happen. The same people who can’t debate in the arena of ideas weren’t suddenly going to change (har).

But it’s all good, and here’s why.

Like all liberals and democrats, they’ve overplayed their hand. Not a small feat when you consider that the Chicago machine has been in office for less than 3 months. They’ve pointed up and yelled “SCOREBOARD!” and assumed that the Bush hatred they fueled over the last 8 years meant that the vast majority of the people suddenly decided to view the world through the same prism that they do.

For me personally, I like my libs overconfident. Lazy. Stupid. Let them continue to live in the bubble they’ve concocted for themselves, the one that says that millions of Americans suddenly want their version of government. Don’t be discouraged when they dismiss you, call you crazy, a traitor, whatever. And resist the urge to say, “Better a tea bag than a d-bag” *looks knowingly at the other side*

After all, that’s their tactics. It’s who they are. They’re not here to exchange ideas. They’re here to tell you your ideas are the stupidest ones on Earth and that you have no right to object to anything they have to say. They’re here to reach into your life and tell you how to live it.

But what they fail to recognize is that today wasn’t something Rush Limbaugh cooked up. It wasn’t something that John McCain or Sarah Palin put together. It wasn’t even something that the Republican party organized. Nope, today was what America is all about: a bunch of people deciding to make their voices heard. Oh, some lib troll may try and claim that we tried to deny them their right to protest the Iraq war, but that’s a dishonest change of subject.

Today was about the folks sending a message. There are more of these parties coming. And let Janet Napolitano label everybody who went to these things as some kind of whacko. In this day and age, as much as looks like the libs control the message, the people can still read the charts and access the legislation. They know what’s going on.

And they know who’s doing it. Let’s build on today. Keep the momentum going. Start by not engaging the name-calling haters. Just nod and smile and get to work perfecting our ideas. And when 2010 rolls around, get out there and get people to pull the lever the right way.

Hopefully, the lazy/overconfident/stupid among the other side will wake up with one heck of a hangover. And with some elbow grease, Pelosi and Reid will have a heck a lot of problems to deal with in Congress.

Let’s do this.

 

Promoted by Brian Faughnan

This is an open question to the board and the forum:

How do we deal with the leftists’ tactics for “arguing”?  (I’ve put the word “arguing” in quotes for a reason).

We’ve all been there.  You’re in a discussion with some democrat or some liberal (there’s really no difference these days) and you’re trying to actually debate them on some point or other.  The exchange could go something like this:

You: “I think Obama’s spending too much.  Macroeconomic theory tells us that the government is notoriously bad at picking winners and losers; I believe an incentive program that allows people and companies to choose where to spend their money themselves is a more effective means to stimulate economic growth.  As a matter of fact, citizens around the country are organizing ‘Tea Parties’ to protest the spending and the coming tax increases.”

The lib you’re talking to: “You’re crazy and so are all those whackos and their ‘Teabagging’.  You know, the GOP used to stand for something.  Now you’re all a bunch of crazy, gay-hating fundamentalists who argue about nothing.  I miss the old GOP that use to want to discuss REAL issues.  If you all don’t figure out a way to bring them back, you’re going the way of the Whigs!”

So to recap:  You cited 2 opinions (“I think Obama’s spending too much”, and “I believe an incentive program that allows people and companies to choose where to spend their money themselves is a more effective means to stimulate economic growth”) and two facts (“Macroeconomic theory tells us that the government is notoriously bad at picking winners and losers” and “As a matter of fact, citizens around the country are organizing ‘Tea Parties’ to protest the spending and the coming tax increases”).

In short, a reasonably well-balanced argument.  But the liberal – and no, lurkers, this is no strawman.  This is how your side is behaving these days – ignored what you had to say, called you names, then claimed you never said anything.

Want examples?  Sure.  The GOP budget – not a single peep about a wonderful plan to simplify the tax code for all.  The tea parties themselves.  On and on.

How do we counterargue this tactic? I realize that the other side is seriously outgunned when it comes to any real issue and has to resort to this kind of thing (after all, you can’t spell liberal without an ‘L’ an ‘I’ and an ‘E’), but what we’re seeing on daily basis has risen to the level of the ridiculous.

Make a criticism of Barack Obama?  You’re the featured whipping boy on Jon Stewart the very next day.  And that’s the BEST you can hope for.  At worst, you’ll find yourself labeled a racist Nazi hater or some other kind of vile slander.

So again, how the hell do we fight this without becoming like them?

Looks like the Navy came through and freed the Captain!  He’s on the USS Bainbridge and is evidently unharmed:

Looks like the SEALs got busy:

The captain of the Maersk Alabama was freed Sunday after being held captive since Wednesday by pirates off the coast of Somalia, a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

var CNN_ArticleChanger = new CNN_imageChanger(‘cnnImgChngr’,'/2009/WORLD/africa/04/12/somalia.pirates/imgChng/p1-0.init.exclude.html’,1,1);

//CNN.imageChanger.load(‘cnnImgChngr’,'imgChng/p1-0.exclude.html’);

The official said Capt. Richard Phillips is uninjured and in good condition, and that three of the four pirates were killed. The fourth pirate is in custody. Phillips was taken aboard the USS Bainbridge, a nearby naval warship.

We’re still not out of the woods yet – the Somali pirates still hold a US tugboat.

Outrage sure feels good, hunh? I mean, the public sure let all those AIG guys have it! Nothing like giving those overpaid, greedy Wall Street (well, uh, Connecticut) b@stards the what-for!

Except that people don’t like being made into public enemy #1; they have a tendency to up and leave.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Several more employees are leaving the controversial financial products unit that brought American International Group Inc to its knees last year, according to a person with knowledge of developments there.

The resignations are in addition to the “handful” of senior AIG Financial Products executives who have already given notice, said the person, who could not quantify the total number of departures.

To date, AIG said the situation at the financial products unit remains “manageable,” despite the departures. But if too many employees quit, Chief Executive Edward Liddy has warned it could be disastrous for AIG and, ultimately, for U.S. taxpayers who are the insurer’s majority owners.

Remember that We The People own 80% of AIG. I don’t know about liberals, but we conservatives like to get returns on our investments. Driving off the people who were trying to unwind the mess and give us said return on investment seems kinda stupid to me, but then again, I’m not big on public humiliation and for whipping up mobs.

This is why democrats are by and large failures: they don’t understand the simple concepts of incentive creation and the fact that sometimes there are consequences for your actions (that nasty phrase called unintended consequences).

Obama actually has this right, just not in the way he intends it to be:

Obama’s comments to a local paper – source: Politico

“I understand their efforts to brand themselves in that fashion. I just want to make sure that when it comes to solving this current economic crisis that we don’t get so caught up in short-term politics that we’re missing the big picture.”

“The Republican Party right now hasn’t sort of figured out what it’s for,” Obama said during a Monday interview with regional press, according to a transcript posted Tuesday by the Louisville Courier-Journal.
“As a proxy, they’ve just decided, ‘We’re going to be against whatever the other side is for,’” he said. “That’s not what’s needed in an economic crisis. You can play that game maybe in the early ’90s, when basically we were pretty prosperous. Right now, everybody has got to pull together.”
…
“What you’ve seen is the Republican Party trying to position themselves as fiscally conservative after eight years of being in power and not being particularly fiscally conservative,” Obama said.

No, Mr. President.  We understand the big picture fine and dandy:  We’re not going to let you knock the country off its successful flight path of the last 230-odd years.

While we Republicans are sorting out what exactly it means to be a Republican and what our guiding principles are, some things that we’ve strayed from are coming back in full force.  Take spending.  You rightly say that we’ve not been ones to talk about ballooning deficits and the like over the last 8 years. Fine.  We’ll grant you that.

But just as an alcoholic has to wake up in the gutter and come to the realization that past behavior has been destructive, so we’ve come back to the basics as it were.  We’re going to spend money where it’s necessary and only where it’s necessary.  And try our darnedest to put the American people’s money where it belongs and will do the most good:  in the hands of the American people.

So here’s a list of where the people’s greenbacks should not go:  Trial lawyers.  Union big bosses.  democrat party hacks.  Useless bureaucrats.  Middlemen in general.  Down ratholes marked ‘capital misallocation’.

Mr. President, when you want to have a dialogue on how the folks get to keep their bucks, how to maximize entrepreneurship, maximize technological development, instill what it means to be a hard-charging, hard working, honorable American in our kids, all the while being good neighbors, we’re right here.  And boy, will we have an earful for you to hear and a stack of stuff for you to read.  Let’s get it done.

But if you want to use our tax dollars to front a series of disincentives, to feed an inefficient government system that acts as a source of economic friction, to create a permanent entitlement disability and stifle the entrepreneurial spirit, strap on your helmet.  Because we’ll be there to stuff on 1st, 2nd and 3rd downs each and every time.  Hope you have a good punter on your team, ’cause you’ll need it.

Sincerely,
The Republicans.

About our message, and what we say:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/09/how-i-learned-to-stop-…

All of which brings us back to those conservative political realists and pragmatists now criticizing Rush over his impolitic (or unclear) remarks: their desire for Limbaugh to be more careful with his phrasings as a way to avoid being misrepresented in a soundbite culture is, frankly, a fool’s game — and, even more frankly, it is indicative of a political strategy that amounts to conceding loss, with the concomitant hope that perhaps we’ll lose more slowly.

There’s a lot of wisdom in the above, and Jeff Goldstein is using Bill Bennett as an example to say this:

No matter how nuanced the speech or how carefully parsed the phraseology is, any message delivered by any rightie will be distorted or hacked apart by the MSM so as to say the opposite of what he/she was trying to say.

The latest evidence of this is the El Rushbo flap. Goldstein presents Rush’s entire remarks in context and if you read the whole thing, any reasonable person will understand immediately what Rush is saying. The bottom line is this

And when your opponents are making the rules, you are necessarily playing their game.

Goldstein goes on to make some great points here

But back to politics: if, as I’ve argued, political realism as a strategy is doomed — not because we can’t be more careful with our words, but rather because it is not always rhetorically effective to do so, nor does such care prevent us from being misrepresented, no matter how precise we try to be — what is the alternative? As many pundits will patiently explain to you, ideological purity and idealism doesn’t win elections, so if not pragmatism, what?

To which I reply, pragmatism is fine. But why not use our idealism pragmatically — which is to say, why not make it our strategy to use idealism as our cudgel against the media and the left in such a way that their tactic of misrepresentation and outrage no longer pays dividends? Why not make it our strategy to destroy their tactics — and in so doing, reaffirm the very principles at the heart of classical liberalism?

One tactic that could be used here is the premature call-out: Just announce prior to making a statement that you expect the MSM to distort what you’re saying and not give you a fair shake. Two options then present themselves (1) the MSM goes ahead and misrepresents you, thus proving your point and giving you more ammo later, or (2) to prove their “fairness” you’re quoted correctly, in which case you get your message out unfiltered by the drive-bys.

One last point:

Rush Limbaugh speaks for Rush Limbaugh. Which is why the next reporter who asks a prominent Republican figure whether or not he or she agrees with Limbaugh’s “hope” that “the President fails” should be met with a firm reminder that the reporter has left out an important part of the context, one that effectively alters the suggestiveness of the question, and that aside from such fundamental dishonesty, Rush Limbaugh is not the head of the party, nor is he an elected leader, so why on earth would I presume to answer for something he said?

Liberals play word games all the time: Take some conservative’s words or statement that may or may not contain some inflammatory language, and make everyone else go and defend it as if we’re responsible for that person’s words. All the while running away like little kids when one of their people steps out of line (which happens 90% of the time over there in libland). Let’s call this tactic “He said it, so you said it”.

This was Michael Steele’s failing on D.L. Hughley and all those other shows. Rather than just saying, “Rush is a radio host, he can say whatever he wants. But while we’re on the subject, let’s look at what Obama is doing here, here, and here….”, he let the MSM make Rush the centerpiece of the debate. In effect, Hughley and the other guests then had an opening to make the debate personal and not issue oriented…

…Which is another one of the left’s tried and true bits of attack politics: Attack the player, not the game. They use this tactic in conjunction with He Said It So You Said It. In this case, they stick a label on a guy and then associate everyone who supports said guy with that label. Call this the “Everybody Knows This” tactic. Its partner is called the “All The Cool Kids Do It Like This” ruse.

An example: “Bush is an idiot”. After a while Everybody Knows Bush is an idiot. It has all the intellectual weight of “Everyone knows that <insert shoe brand X> is totally uncool”. Then the companion tactic comes into view, “Since everyone knows that <insert shoe brand X> is uncool, nobody likes <insert shoe brand X>”.

Then when the target says or does something that appears bad or can be parsed to make it seem that way, we combine all 3 tactics into the Hate Blender (TM) and whip up some good ‘ol lib outrage:

“Bush is such an idiot. How can you possibly support this moron in chief. Did you hear what he said? You must be some kind of outcast monster to align yourself with him!”

How many times have all of us heard that one, eh?

So there you go. Give the label out, repeat ad nauseum, make the defendant throw the poor guy completely overboard for less than 1% of what the target stands for, and note that only fellow idiots could possibly be in agreement (no matter how small) with the target.

Summarizing the above: Liberals are like high school jocks trying to get into some poor girl’s pants.

Here, smoke some weed or drink this, you don’t want to be like <insert the poor girl who gets the dork or frigid label>. Everybody’s doing it. She said it was wrong but everyone knows she’s totally uncool.

Only this time it’s America getting screwed. The good news is, these tactics are easily recognized and we can counter them by calling them out in advance.

After opening his eyes a crack and writing in the Times that Obama wasn’t the guy he thought he was, David Brooks became a problem for Barack Obama.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/opinion/06brooks.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

On Tuesday, I wrote that the Obama budget is a liberal, big government document that should make moderates nervous. The column generated a large positive response from moderate Obama supporters who are anxious about where the administration is headed. It was not so popular inside the White House. Within a day, I had conversations with four senior members of the administration and in the interest of fairness, I thought I’d share their arguments with you today.

Captain Ed takes him to task for airing Rahm Emmanuel’s point of view in his column, but I’m going to disagree with that.  When’s the last time you saw some lib commentator or columnist give Bush a chance to respond to the tripe they wrote about him?

Of course, the nonsense the admin’s flacks handed down was lengendary:

In the first place, they do not see themselves as a group of liberal crusaders. <b>They see themselves as pragmatists who inherited a government and an economy that have been thrown out of whack. They’re not engaged in an ideological project to overturn the Reagan Revolution, a fight that was over long ago. They’re trying to restore balance: nurture an economy so that productivity gains are shared by the middle class and correct the irresponsible habits that developed during the Bush era.

The budget, they continue, isn’t some grand transformation of America. It raises taxes on energy and offsets them with tax cuts for the middle class. It raises taxes on the rich to a level slightly above where they were in the Clinton years and then uses the money as a down payment on health care reform. That’s what the budget does. It’s not the Russian Revolution.

Yeah, irresponsible habits like figuring out ways to direct capital where it’s more efficient.  What a bunch of whiners.  How anybody could type the above with a straight face is beyond me:

Take energy prices and taxes.  Obama’s got enough spending to double the federal debt in 10 years or so…to pay for this, and remember that the dems are the “pay as you go crowd”, they’re going to need to raise some revenue.  So what do we have here?  Their cap and trade system is not only going to first-order raise energy prices, but will have numerous downstream effects as the tax gets passed onto consumers.

Energy is one of the cornerstones of the economy.  Increasing its prices at the consumer level means more than just a higher heating and/or electrical bill at home.  It means at work your company’s operating expenses will be higher, tying up money that could be used somewhere else (and look out for the EPA creating new building regulations forcing companies to spend more to “greenify” their properties).

At the grocery store, it takes some energy in the form of gas to move the food from point A to point B.  Higher energy costs, higher food prices.  That goes for just about every consumer good in America, for that matter.  We’ll have higher shipping rates.  Higher airfares. And so on.

On to health care:

Third, they say, Republicans should welcome the budget’s health care ideas. The Medicare reform represents a big cut in entitlement spending. It amounts to means-testing the system. It introduces more competition and cuts corporate welfare. These are all Republican ideas.

Now THIS is just Orwellian.  The stimulus (spendulus) bill creates a massive health care IT infrastructure and a large bureacracy to oversee health care planning and guide patient care.  There are regional sub-committees in place to ensure local “compliance” with the findings of the central panel.

How is this going to lead to more competition, exactly?  And how is this corporate welfare, anyway?  Okay, now I see where Captain Ed had a point.

But, wait!  This op-ed gets even better (or worse):

Fourth, the White House claims the budget will not produce a sea of red ink. Deficits are now at a gargantuan 12 percent of G.D.P., but the White House aims to bring this down to 3.5 percent in 2012. Besides, the long-range debt is what matters, and on this subject President Obama is hawkish.

How the hell does doubling the national debt and then dishonestly claiming that we’ll pay for it by not extending the surge to 2019 make Obama hawkish on the debt?

I can’t read much more of this.  Two more smaller snippets from the Obama people that really stand out as blazingly dishonest:

He is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security as well as health spending. …

Fifth, the Obama folks feel they spend as much time resisting liberal ideas as enacting them.

Hahahahahahaha!  You almost have to admire this level of shameless lying.  The sad thing is, nobody will call them on it.  David Brooks proves that one out right here.

So I'm nuking some chili before heading to the gym with the TV on. Mrs. SteveM calls and says to go without her. Mmmmmm....chili and cornbread. Anyways, I have the tube on the channel is accidently tuned into NBC Nightly News. I never watch the prime time news on any of the major 3. Mostly because I'm either not home or busy at that point in the evening, so today was an exception. The obligatory Blago is fired section comes on. My ears perk up, wondering if I'll here the word "democrat" uttered at any time during the broadcast segment.

This guy is going to be a disaster.

Obama gave his first one-on-one to al Aribiya.  Check out some of his answers (hat tip to Hot Air) – most of what he says is typical Obama, the no-answer answer Obama, that is.  Long on rhetoric, short of specifics.  Some of his answers, though, are quite illuminating:

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/01/27/65087.html#004

Q: You’ve been saying essentially that we should not look at these issues — like the Palestinian-Israeli track and separation from the border region — you’ve been talking about a kind of holistic approach to the region. Are we expecting a different paradigm in the sense that in the past one of the critiques — at least from the Arab side, the Muslim side — is that everything the Americans always tested with the Israelis, if it works. Now there is an Arab peace plan, there is a regional aspect to it. And you’ve indicated that. Would there be any shift, a paradigm shift?

…
Obama – Now, Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.

And so what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there’s a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs.

Let’s start with this one.  For starters, he’s got a great chance to give a balanced answer here and ask that that the Arab side come to the table with some sacrifices of their own.  Instead, it’s all on Israel to make the sacrifices so long as there’s a ‘serious partnership’ on the other side.

How naive is this?  The ‘serious partners’ on the other side run guns and ammo into Gaza and the WB and openly teach violence against Jews.

Q: I want to ask you about the broader Muslim world, but let me – one final thing about the Palestinian-Israeli theater. There are many
Palestinians and Israelis who are very frustrated now with the current conditions and they are losing hope, they are disillusioned, and they believe that time is running out on the two-state solution because – mainly because of the settlement activities in Palestinian-occupied territories.

Will it still be possible to see a Palestinian state — and you know the contours of it — within the first Obama administration?

THE PRESIDENT: I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state — I’m not going to put a time frame on it — that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, that allows for trade with other countries, that allows the creation of businesses and commerce so that people have a better life.

And, look, I think anybody who has studied the region recognizes that the situation for the ordinary Palestinian in many cases has not improved. And the bottom line in all these talks and all these conversations is, is a child in the Palestinian Territories going to be better off? Do they have a future for themselves? And is the child in Israel going to feel confident about his or her safety and security? And if we can keep our focus on making their lives better and look forward, and not simply think about all the conflicts and tragedies of the past, then I think that we have an opportunity to make real progress.

But it is not going to be easy, and that’s why we’ve got George Mitchell going there. This is somebody with extraordinary patience as well as extraordinary skill, and that’s what’s going to be necessary.

Another example of Obama not being able to handle himself (kudos to Captain Ed for pointing this one out).  Note the bolded part.  Obama lets the guy bait him into answering a question that basically blames the Israelis – Palestinians are frustrated due to ‘settlement issues’.  Hogwash.  The settlements are in the West Bank.  There are no more settlements in the Gaza strip.  Yet where was the latest round of fighting?  In the Gaza strip.

Israel may want to watch Obama carefully.  Fortunately, Mitchell is a seasoned vet who won’t let Obama do anything overtly bad, but it’s pretty clear the Prez needs some better interview prep.

Here’s an exchange where he does slightly better: (referring to Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri):

Q: They seem very nervous, exactly. Now, tell me why they should be more nervous?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that when you look at the rhetoric that they’ve been using against me before I even took office –

Q: I know, I know.

THE PRESIDENT: — what that tells me is that their ideas are bankrupt. There’s no actions that they’ve taken that say a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because of them, or has better health care because of them.

In my inauguration speech, I spoke about: You will be judged on what you’ve built, not what you’ve destroyed. And what they’ve been doing is destroying things. And over time, I think the Muslim world has recognized that that path is leading no place, except more death and destruction.

Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

Obama’s trying to marginalize OBL here…that’s not a bad strategy, but he’s mostly talking to the Muslim regimes when he says they’ll be judged on what they’ve built.  It’s also a careful row to hoe when you considered Sen. Patty Murray’s remarks from a few years ago about how many day care centers Osama built…and also when you throw in the fact that Hamas has a services wing that provides some infrastructure.

The whole interview has subtle Bush bashing in it, but this part stood out:

Q: President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, “war on terror,” and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people — Islamic fascism. You’ve always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of –

THE PRESIDENT: I think that you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. <b>We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.</b>

And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in
distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda — that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it — and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down.

But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.

Bush went out of his way to stress that Islam is a peaceful religion, but people hear what they want to hear.  Now you have Obama here saying that all that was just rhetoric from the cowboy Bush.  Obama’s forgetting something – al Qaeda remains somewhat popular in the Arab and Muslim worlds and has been for sometime, and this predates Bush.

To me the whole interview was Obama signaling that he’s going to take a completely different tact in dealing with the middle east, at least in his words…but what’s he going to do when he starts listening to them tell him that Israel should be abolished and that millions of Palestinians should be allowed to return?

He’s treading very dangerous waters here.  I think he’s going to find that his star wattage doesn’t apply in that part of the world (or won’t for long) and will get a lesson in reality very shortly.

You’ve all read the posts. As users of the internet and interactors (grant me the license to make up a word) with various types of unhinged nutroots posters, you’ve had the pleasure of reading stuff like this:

Pure, 100% nuttiness. Accept no substitutes.

**We Americans have been known all over the world for our generosity, kindness, and compassion. When there have been major catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, or tsunamis the Americans have always been there to help in every possible way. That is all done now.

Nobody thinks of these things anymore when they think of Americans.

When the world contemplates America now, they think instead of the horrors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Gitmo. They think about waterboarding, sexual humiliation, and torture. They think about rape, beatings, flagrant human rights abuses, and cold-blooded murder. Thanks to George W. Bush and the neocon Republicans this has become our enduring legacy.**

Today, fellow RedStaters, we begin a multi-part series called, “Up Yours, nutroots!”. The premise of which is to highlight every time Obama throws a koskid like the boob above under the HopeandChange bus. Some call it the application of reality; I call it hilarious.

Read More →

I have to respectfully disagree with Erick here:

*We have Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and Chris Matthews now all in for Obama and admitting it. Therefore, we can conclude that any Republican who appears on MSNBC will be there solely to serve as a foil for the Obama fan club.

We should resolve to designate elected Republicans wiling to play the fool “Hanoi Jane Republicans.” There is no longer any value in going on MSNBC now that their chief faces are declaring openly that making Obama succeed is part of their job.*

With all due respect, sir, this is exactly the wrong mentality to have if we’re to get back in the game again…

Read More →

Why McCain Blew It And How to Fix It

Some rambling thoughts and a way forward
by SteveM

So it’s a Sunday afternoon and I’d just finished cleaning out this crawl space we want to use as a small shed. Yuck. The previous owners of this house had a bunch of insulation and firewood in there, along with other junk. For those of you who are fans of the 1970′s, I pity you. Especially after I found the old newspaper with the picture of Tony Orlando and Dawn and all the polyester glory from 1974.

Anyways, having done my honey-do for the day, I grabbed the golf clubs and headed over to the par 3 for some late evening links. I love golf. When I can play by myself, it’s time for me to relax and think without any distractions. But today would be different. Politics was on my mind.

Read More →