Sometimes a picture says a thousand words...

How's all that Hope and Change working out for ya??

We've got a President who has spent more in the first six months of his first term than the evil George W spent over his entire eight year administration.

We've got a President whose projected budget will spend more than all the Presidents we've ever had, combined.

We've got a President who rammed through a $787 billion spending bill chock full of pork and political paybacks, using the fear that unemployment will hit 8% if the stimulus bill isn't passed. And now unemployment sites at almost 10% and rising, with no real end in sight.

We've got a President, although beloved and worshiped at home, who is seen as extremely weak pushover to the rest of the world. North Korea has stepped up their nuclear weapon program and has fired missiles in the direction of Hawaii. Iran continues to flip the bird to the rest of the world, refusing to halt it's nuclear weapons program. Russia invades it's neighbor and continues to rattle sabres. And what does President Pantywaste do? He pledges to reduce our own nuclear stockpile and is considering scrapping our missile defense program...the same program that is designed to protect us from the missiles openly being developed and tested by the likes of North Korea and Iran.

Unemployment rising over 10% with no real end in sight. Sabre rattling from our enemies and adversaries. A federal budget deficit in the trillions, highest in our nation's 200+ year history. Government control and ownership of the banking and financial systems. Government control and ownership of auto industry. Government control of the salaries paid to executives in the private industry. Soon-to-be government control and ownership of the healthcare industry. Over 30 "czars" who oversee pretty much all aspects of our lives (compensation, health, consumer purchasing, etc), all reporting directly to the president without Congressional approval.

Is this the change you all were hoping for?

Listen to this

You need to listen to the audio here. It's a YouTube video, but it's all audio. It's a little over 9 minutes long, but please listen to it. The speaker does get a bit excited and may sensationalize some statements, but listen to what he is saying. This is some scary shit. And with them controlling both the House AND the Senate, it may very well be unstoppable. This is about the Cap-and-Trade bill under debate in the Senate. It has already been passed by the House by 219-212. While the House only requires a majority (51%) vote, the Senate requires a 2/3 (67%) vote.



The speaker makes a very good point about global warming. If we human beings and our burning of fossil fuels are to blame for the temperature of our planet increasing, how do we explain away previous ice ages? Its a proven fact that our planet has had numerous ice ages in its history. For Christ's sake, aminals have been found frozen alive in ice. What caused the temperature to rise enough to cycle the planet out of these ice ages? I'm pretty sure there were no soccer moms driving SUV's thousands and thousands of years ago, were there?

No. Our planet has cycled from cold to hot to cold to hot more times than we can even imagine. So why now, all of a sudden, are human beings responsible for causing the temperature to increase? Humans may have been around for many thousands of years, and have weathered through untold numbers of temperature cycles. So why does our burning of fossil fuels over the last 50 years get blamed? Are we humans SO freaking conceited to think that we now control Mother Nature? We now can control the natural temperature cycles of the entire planet....the same cycles that have ocurred for millions of years?

Disagree? Then please explain what caused the Earth's temperature to rise enough to cycle out of its previous ice ages when there were NO human beings burning fossil fuels. Can't explain it? Then you can't assume mankind is responsible for the rising temperatures now...regardless of how much money Al Gore makes trying to convince us otherwise.

Nuff said...

A lot of people blame President Bush and his Republican policies for damaging the economy. The Obama administration and it's media minions still refer to the economy as the "inherited economy." However, looking at the data presented in these graphs, its kinda hard to continue making that argument.

Click the image to enlarge it.

Congress is the government branch who actually controls the purse strings of the United States. The president can't spend a dime without Congressional approval. The Democrats took control of the House in 2006, and control of the Senate in 2008. So the Democrats have practically owned the economy since 2006.

Over his eight years in office, President Bush spent $994 billion dollars. In contrast, President Obama has spent nearly $12 trillion in his first six months. Now you tell me, who's economy is this? Sure, the Democrats make the argument that eight years of bad Bush policies are to blame, and they were just left holding the bag. However, if fiscal irresponsibility by the Republicans is to blame, then why take the spending to the next level? $994 billion over eight years averages out to $124 billion a year...nothing to be very proud of at all. However, at President Obama's rate of spending over just six months, he's well on his way to $24 trillion a year.

12 trillion = 12,000 billions. Here's a cool graphic depicting what this actually looks like. OMG!

Now you tell me who is responsible for the economy? Still think its President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress?

Graphic borrowed from here.

Is the honeymoon over?

Here we go again

I guess we're all done with the financial crisis. And the recession must be over. Right?

Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said.

Lack of adequate government oversight and a loosening of mortgage lending rules and principles contributed heavily to the financial and economic crisis we are in. As a result the crisis spawned the need opportunity for the government to "bailout" the banks who made these bad lending decisions. And now the banks are being urged by Congress to loosen the rules again.

What the fuck??? These guys are all about blaming the Bush Administration for the economic problems our country now faces. But now that there's a new sheriff in town, and they are in the midst of raiding our country's treasury with the "Stimulus", it must be OK to relax the mortgage lending standards again. The same mortgage lending standards that got us into the mess in the first place. I guess this will just ensure we are in a constant need of government bailouts.

Stop the planet. I want to get off.

Holy Smokes!

On April 1, the new federal tax on tobacco products went into effect. The tax is part of the expanded SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) funding signed into law in February 2009 by our president. While I'm not sure taxing tobacco and alcohol to fund health coverage for children is the right way to go, the cause is noble nonetheless. The expanded tax funds healthcare coverage for an additional 4 million children, pregnant women, and legal immigrants.

To provide the funding, in part, the bill raised the maximum federal excise tax on cigarettes and cigars from a nickel to maximum of 40 cents. Do the math, folks. That's an 800% increase. All at once, with the stroke of a pen. Holy smokes!

To survive, manufacturers simply pass the tax burden on to the consumer. Simple supply and demand economics illustrate that if prices increases high enough, demand for said product will decrease. And if demand decreases enough, people lose their jobs. Don't believe me? Just ask the employees of Hav-a-Tampa.

Tampa will lose part of its cigar heritage in August when Hav-A-Tampa shuts its factory near Seffner and lays off about 495 employees, closing a factory that has been operating since 1902.

So why is Hav-a-Tampa closing its plant in Tampa?

...the company attributed much of its trouble to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a federal program that provides health insurance to low-income children. It is funded, in part, by a new federal tax on cigars and cigarettes. McKenzie couldn't say how much sales of Hav-A-Tampa cigars had fallen off, but the numbers have dropped significantly, he said.

Previously, federal excise taxes on cigars were limited to no more than a nickel, said Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America trade group. The tax increase, which took effect April 1, raises the maximum tax on cigars to about 40 cents, Sharp said.

OK. Adding a possible 35 cents to the price of a cigar may not be enough to make people instantly stop smoking cigars. Cigar smoking is more of a leisure-time activity, rather than an addiction. Thusly, there's still a demand for the product. So, what happens next?

Work that had been done in Tampa will now be performed in an Altadis plant in Puerto Rico, where it has extra manufacturing capacity, McKenzie said.

Yeah, that's it. the jobs will be moved off-shore.

"We can't afford to make these cigars in the U.S. anymore."

Ahh. If the cigars are made in the US, Hav-a-Tampa will have to absorb an 800% increase in the excise tax, payable to Uncle Sam. But if the cigars are made off-shore, no such tax burden applies. So, off-shore they go. And almost 500 American jobs disappear with it.

Want to raise the tax to generate some additional revenue for the noble SCHIP program? Fine. But was it really necessary to do it by a factor of 800%? Do you know of ANY tax on ANYTHING that increased 800% overnight?

President Pantywaste strikes again

What is happening in this world? The atrocious events going on in Iran has elicited shock and condemnation from the world over. I don't profess to be an expert on Iranian election protocols, but when a government bans all media coverage, and then starts beating, jailing, and even murdering it's own people in the streets, it obviously has something to hide. And how does our President respond? He says,

"The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future."

He calls is a debate. A fucking debate. Innocent people shot dead in the streets by the government. Very good, Mr. President. You sure don't want to upset the mullahs. After all, they might not show up for your hotdogs and fireworks this weekend.

From James Lewis over at American Thinker:

The White House is now occupied by a little president who just isn't there when he is called upon to take a clear, moral stand. For such sheer gutless flabbiness and evasion, you have to look back to the dismal Jimmy Carter years. If Tehran seems quieter today, it's because the civilian demonstrators have been identified and are being beaten and tortured and maybe killed in Evin Prison. Don't believe for a moment that the sadistic regime has changed, just because you don't see people bleeding on the streets. They are bleeding all right. It's just out of public view.

{SNIP}

The Europeans are being Reaganesque. Angela Merkel is morally serious. She stated officially that "Germany stands on the side of the people in Iran who want to exercise their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly."
Nicolas Sarkozy upheld our real values. He called the pictures of women and teenagers being beated by Basij thugs on motorcycles "brutal" and "totally disproportionate." "The ruling power claims to have won the elections ... if that were true, we must ask why they find it necessary to imprison their opponents and repress them with such violence."

When a French president shows more balls than an American president, it's freaking pathetic.

It's not like anybody expects Obama to launch a bombing campaign to punish the mullhas. This isn't about any form of military intervention. What happens in Iran stays in Iran. This is an Iranian problem and needs to be handled by Iranians. But how about voicing some form of support for the innocent people who are fighting to get their voices heard in their own government? Hope and Change, right?

Ah, what should we really expect from a noob.

It is truly embarrassing to be an American right now.