|
| |
Monday
Jan 12
2009
1543
4974
2205
68157
|
Certifigate "There is no law that actually defines 'natural born', so the argument could go on forever with thousands of different interpretations. The consensus is that he is a U.S. citizen, and therefore eligible." Ron Paul Comments on Meaning of "Natural Born"Errata I had some dopey typos in the 1/6/09 entry, I've fixed them, and I won't waste time pointing out what they were.Who Hates Jews? Ron Paul!Pitchfork Pat!Jimmuh!Who else?...and plenty more!
Iran has told Hamas to stand and fight, or be cut off from Iranian terror money."To the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you." -- President George W. Bush, State of the Union 2005 *
|
|
|
| |
Sunday
Jan 6
2009
1543
4944
2197
67633
|
Hudna Israel has gone to war in Gaza in self-defense. During its (I think) year-long, so-called truce with Israel, Hamas fired about 3,000 missiles into Israel. Even at the time that latest hudna was supposedly agreed to, various thug leaders inside Hamas said they didn't recognize any cease-fire. Israel had the sense to wait until it expired and Hamas resumed attacks in earnest under its own imprimatur, then began a nice, thick, juicy retaliation that clearly used information gathered over a period of time in order to identify the targets that Hamas wasn't doing much of a job of hiding anyway.
Arab fanboys and fangirls, and other type of Jew-haters, have of course never stopped hating, and condemned Israel before the hudna, throughout the hudna, and now after the hudna. One common way to do that is to blame Israel for its clearly, and at worst, appropriate response. The Carter-era maggot Zbigniew Brzezinski assures us that Hamas' rockets are annoying but not lethal (a lie), denies that Arafat torpedoed the Clinton-era peace efforts (a lie), accuses pro-Israel groups of McCarthyism (a lie), and equates Likud with Hamas. Thanks george76 for posting this one:Hamas cannot bomb Israel out of existence. Hamas has dropped ten thousand rockets on civilian targets in Sderot since 2001. * Ten thousand rockets in eight years (if "since 2001" is inclusive), perhaps seven years (if not), and not one fatality in Israel? Hamas are extraordinarily bad shots -- unless Zbigniew Brzezinski is just lying of course.Hamas' suicide bombers have killed hundreds of Israelis eating in restaurants, dancing in discos, and riding on buses... Jewish children have long been a favorite target of Hamas' rockets and suicide bombers... Hamas' covenant is not about achieving a Palestinian state along side Israel, but about replacing Israel with a Palestinian state and pushing the Jews into the sea. It is not just Hamas' covenant that commits it to this goal, but its murderous actions. * He is.In 2005, Israel risked civil war by forcing its settlers out of Gaza. This was a bold commitment to the policy of exchanging land for peace. This is a policy loudly enunciated at every forum on the Middle East hosted by the peace and justice community. American Jewish philanthropists, in a deal brokered by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, poured fourteen million dollars into Gaza to buy three thousand state-of-the-art greenhouses from the departing settlers (said to be worth 100 million). These were turned over to the residents of Gaza, who immediately turned them into scrap. *
The Enemy Within Blaming Israel for defending itself undermines liberty, because it undermines a democracy and undermines US interests abroad and at home.
In one of his rants against Israel and Jews, Pitchfork Pat Buchanan purports to recount a vignette from just after the 1973 war -- one in which Nixon had ordered that "everything that will fly" be used to airlift materiel straight to Israel, and Operation Nickel Grass moved far more tonnage (and better selected at that) to Israel than the Russians (with a much shorter route) were able to do for its Arab pawns. Buchanan supposedly asked then-still-President Nixon about the long-term prospects of Israel, and supposedly Nixon said nothing, just extended an arm and made the 'thumbs down' gesture. Carter was given a gift -- Anwar Sadat, who'd gone to war in 1973 with a tricky diplomatic switcheroo in mind, and just needed a limited victory as part of that. The Ford administration had helped broker the face-to-face negotiations between military and diplomatic reps from Israel and Egypt, both at kilometer 101 and in the three capitals (D.C., Tel Aviv, and Cairo).
Russian influence went into decline after the 1973 war because, despite all the advantages the USSR had provided -- and having incited the Arabs to start the war -- the Israelis still managed to resist, then break the Arab advance, then counterattack. The Syrian army was hard hit, losing three-fourths of its armor and all of its self-esteem, and leading to both the brutal executions of the Syrian generals who ran the operation, and not much later to the Syrian invasion and decades-long occupation of Lebanon.
There's been a diplomatic approach that hasn't changed much since Nixon, which is to push out Russian influence and/or confine it to as few countries as possible. While Saddam was still in power, there was a significant bloc of Russian allies consisting of Syria (including Syrian-controlled Lebanon) and Iraq. The big oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf States, including Iran, had been easy to turn more and more into US alignment, because of the atheism of the USSR. The OPEC embargo was, at worst, a diplomatic bump in the road. The only Arab state truly humiliated by the outcome of the war was Syria. Egypt's Sadat had achieved his aims, booted the Soviets, concluded what we'd call an honorable peace with Israel, and gotten the country onto US paps.
Oooh, cool coinage I just thought of -- "Paps Americana" -- hope that's original, I'm not going to look it up.
The Saudis especially didn't like the eventual huge increase in proven oil reserves around the world, made possible by the tripling (even more than that from absolute bottom to absolute spot-market top) of crude. Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of that price spike were the Soviets, making them major competitors in Europe. It is at least probable that the Soviets had this outcome in mind when they engineered the war by manipulating the rage and despair that tailed the 1967 war. The other nations which had known about and/or participated in the 1973 sneak attack on Israel (the list includes Pakistan) weren't sufficiently committed to bring about permanent instability (more instability than usual, that is), and learned their lessons about alignment with the USSR. The 1973 war turned out to be a major foreign policy disaster in their Middle East interests, but they no doubt anticipated that as well, and went out on their own terms. [interesting sidebar; another and another]
Carter, Mondale, and Zbig-boy (with help from the French, Russians, and other Euro-powers) undermined the Shah. His removal may or may not have been inevitable, but regardless, the Carter administration made no attempt to help him remain. The only finger they lifted was the middle one. As a consequence of that and other foolish, submissive, fatalistic behavior, Shiite-heads seized the US embassy and humiliated the US in the eyes of the Moslem world (as well as the non-aligned nations) for over a year. Those two events poured gasoline on the kooky, misdirected rage and shame of Moslems worldwide. They led directly to:
- the Soviet debacle in its overthrow and occupation of Afghanistan (Carter's sole strategic triumph was to supply the Afghan resistance to the Soviet aggression)
- the rise of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc
- further politicization of the Olympics (Carter's boycott of the Moscow Olympics remains one of his two diplomatic triumphs, and posterity hasn't finished with the other one, the Camp David accords)
- the Presidency of Ronald Reagan
- the half-presidency of George Bush, Sr.
Arafat's rise to dominance in the PLO, which before that had been a umbrella of cutthroat rival organizations, became possible because of the repeated and final failure of conventional warfare to overthrow Israel. He may have been an AID-riddled homosexual mass-murderer, but Arafat knew Middle Eastern politics inside out. It can also be attributed to the decline of Soviet regional influence, because the USSR had to arrest its slide. The various other strong organizations inside the PLO had their own patrons (Syria for the PFLP, for example), but over the next couple of decades the only powerful one was Fatah. After the overthrow of the Shah, Iran started a long-view approach of trying to establish hegemony (to use a commie-style term) over the worldwide Islamicist movement. Khomeini may not have been aware that he was doing that, but I'd not bet on that. Khomeini's major misstep was to believe that Saddam was negotiating in good faith, but K had no choice at the time. Saddam wanted the Iranian oilfields, and had the backing of the USSR, the Gulf States, and the US. It turned into a quagmire that cost Iran and Iraq a lot of lives, ultimately undermined the USSR, and pulled the Gulf states (other than Iran) into a closer relationship with the US.
That war lasted eight years, and Iraq was driven out and badly mauled. Iran was diplomatically and militarily isolated. The USSR was on the ropes in Afghanistan, and the US had supplied the Islamicist forces fighting the Russians. That was done in order to keep Iranian influence out of that neighboring country. That policy continued until the Soviets were out, and the US no longer was interested in supporting an insurgency. Saudi money and nationals had moved in, with the US doing nothing about it, in order to keep Iranian influence out, as much as to create a Saudi-influenced Islamic state. Genius that he is, Osama bin Laden turned on the Saudi corruptocracy, attacked the US in a series of high-profile terrorist acts, culminating in the 9/11 mass-murders. That led to the US overthrow of the Taliban, elections in Afghanistan, isolation and separation of Saudi and Pakistani interests, and in the long run, the destruction of Saddam Hussein, elections in Iraq, and containment of Iran.
Thanks Zbig, Walt, and Jimmuh, for making all that necessary! Morons.
Reagan was opposed to the rinky-dink version of nuclear arms control his recent predecessors had advocated. He pushed for a tougher line as well as mutual dismantling of nuclear arsenals -- top that, Demwits -- and via other means, very publicly pushed the USSR past the breaking point. For those who don't remember, weren't alive then, or had their minds twisted and warped by public so-called educational systems, the USSR fell apart in December 1991, during the administration of the elder Bush, but largely due to policies formulated and pursued during the Reagan administration. Between the two of them, they destroyed or helped to destroy the USSR, the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua, the Marxist (mostly the brothers, not Karl) dictatorship in Grenada, the removal of the dictator of Panama, dismantling of the Soviet puppet-states of East Germany, Poland, and the rest of the former Warsaw Pact, beginning of the dismantling of the apartheid system in South Africa (yes, that's right, left-wing losers! 1991! Look it up!), unification of formerly divided Yemen, and probably others I'm forgetting about.
By contrast, Carter helped engineer the disaster stemming from the transformation of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, while the Clinton administration invaded Haiti to nearly bloodlessly replace one corrupt scoundrel with another. Carter was involved in Clinton's Haiti fiasco, as well as another Clinton masterpiece, the supposed agreement with North Korea -- the one which enabled the illegal Pyongyang regime to develop nuclear weapons. Carter has persisted with his Jew-bashing rhetoric and behavior, while he's built a myth of affordable housing in the US and never seen a dictatorship he didn't like. Despite what some trolls around here claim, Carter was the worst US president, and has only gotten worse.Looking Toward Mid-terms Al Franken's co-conspirators in the bureaucratic framework of Minnesota have manufactured a victory in the recount. Senator Coleman is filing for yet another one. While I don't expect him NOT to be seated, there's been some waffling by the Demwit leadership, possibly due to Reid's, uh, unusual remarks about senator-designate from Illinois Roland W. Burris.Personal Whining Amazon's incomprehensible new system puts me at a suddenly much lower (as of this morning I think) 1,543; my "new" ranking shows 12,504 ; my number of helpful votes has been stripped down to 1,596.Economy -- Good, Bad, and Indifferent B4Ranch has some timely topics, "Are you looking for a job?" #1 #2 and #3, and 2ndDivisionVet posted "100 best places to live and launch (a business)".
|
|
|
| |
Saturday
Dec 6
2008
1526
4746
2133
65703
|
Kumbaya I really enjoy FreeRepublic. Sometimes I wonder about the hostility, childishness, foolishness, trollishness, and apparent idiocy that emerges from time to time around here, and I not even talking about half of the stuff I post, nor even stuff posted in reply to it (although some of both no doubt qualifies). Anyway, here's the closing quote, and just to demonstrate the kind of non-sequiturs to which I in part refer, I'm putting it at the beginning of this entry:Eating our own...Time to make a new start in Free Republic.
7-26-04 | Bob J
Posted on 07/26/2004 7:41:11 PM PDT by Bob J The last few months I've seen an increasing trend for FReepers to start going for each others jugular. Sometimes we forget (I've certainly done it myself) that in the grand scheme of things, we are on the same team. We may disagree on priorities or how far we are willing to go, but we have enough enemy in the left without creating more amongst ourselves. We can disagree but be civil to each other. We can debate nuance, but not believe that our personal positions are more important than the health of the whole. Let's argue vigorously but remind ourselves the guy whose trachia we are ripping out today may be sitting next to us in a foxhole tommorrow.
I'm going to propose that we all make a new start. Let's put all past differences behind us and resolve to band together and fight the good fight, the elimination of liberalism as a significant culturual influence in America...and see that to its end in our lifetimes.
If you agree, please post your thoughts and ping your lists and your friends to this thread.
I'll go first. I've been on this Forum for a while and have had the time to make a lot of enemies. I'm putting everything that's happened in the past into the grave and making a new start with everyone (you know who you are). I pledge to argue my case, but will always remember that even though we have differences, you ultimately are my friend in the trenches. There's still plenty of nastiness regarding Senator McCain, the Jews, foreign aid, NASA, Abraham Lincoln, and supposed injuries and biases against various self-styled victim classes. All those folks are in need of enlightenment, IMHO, but the difference between their heads and a pumpkin is, the pumpkin will someday have a light in it. [apologies to Dennis Miller for that blatant rip-off]Runaway Train The denouement of the 2008 election isn't yet upon us. That will take place when the Certifigate controversy is resolved, which could take years. If Obama was (as his relatives there say) born in Kenya, he isn't eligible to become President of the United States. That means any bill he signs won't have the force of law unless it has been passed by a veto-proof majority of both houses of Congress.
It appears that Al Franken's attempt to steal a seat in the US Senate has failed.Minnesota Recount: Team Franken glad their supporters are uneducated?
Hot Air ^ | 11/20/2008 | Ed Morrissey
Posted on 11/20/2008 1:27:17 PM PST by Kid Shelleen This has to be a first. In explaining why he believes Al Franken will prevail in the recount, a lawyer volunteering for Team Franken says that Franken voters are less educated and therefore more ignorant about how to fill in a bubble on a ballot. No, I'm not kidding:
Franken Demands State Count Late Ballots
Semi-News/Semi-Satire | 21 Nov 2008 | John Semmens
Posted on 11/21/2008 12:03:19 PM PST by John Semmens Alleging that his support comes from the least educated and intelligent segment of society, Minnesota senatorial candidate Al Franken (D) insisted that a box load of over 3,000 late ballots be included in the recount. "These poor people were duped by the oldest Republican dirty trick in the books," Franken lamented as he displayed a flyer indicating that Democrats were to vote on Wednesday, November 5. "Stupidity should not be grounds for disenfranchising voters. These late votes must be counted" All but two of the more than 3,000 ballots Franken presented were cast for him. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley was the choice of the other two.
Meanwhile, a Demwit governor is being indicted for bribery and whatnot, Chambliss whipped the Demwit opponent in the runoff, another pubbie prevailed in Ohio despite the efforts of a Demwit state official, Joe Lieberman was scolded by the partisan shill Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather had a tantrum in which he said we needed to have Obama's inauguration on December 1st...Bailouts, Purse Strings, Budgets, Taxes, Energy The price of crude has fallen below $50, the retail price of gasoline around here has fallen below $1.60 a gallon (and has bounced a couple of times), the price of diesel around here was above $5 a gallon, and is about half that now, and fuel oil (my mom got her tank filled today) is, I think she said, around $2 a gallon. My wild guess is, there won't be any Big Three bailout. Some kind of nebulous bailout for banks has been selectively applied, while Congress continues to grandstand but otherwise do little regarding the Big Three automakers.
Over on the partisan spin machine that is the Discover magazine website 'blogs, it is claimed that there will not be a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. The sneaky lying bastard may try some kind of backdoor method, such as a "carbon tax" or "emissions tax" or some other industry-killing, job-killing, economy-killing, sovereignty-killing tax policy. I'm not sure he'd survive that (politically speaking), but think about it -- nothing else could be offered, such as a nice, honest massive increase in retail gasoline federal excise tax, as an alternative. Any tax that gets put on entities which don't print money (i.e., everything but the gubmint) is actually going straight onto the backs of customers -- but they are directed to blame the entities, not the government scumbags who are levying the tax.
Barack Obama criticised for failure to signal change in foreign policy pertains to Barack Obama's inability to live up to one very influential part of his line of campaign b.s., namely, he's retaining Gates as Defense Secretary. Hey, Demwits should have seen that one coming, since The Sock Puppet was on record as being in support of a troop surge in Afghanistan -- despite the Iraq Surge having been one of the many things implemented by President Bush that BHMO bitched about.
Obama campaign mulls what to do with $30M surplus, meanwhile Hillary still owes money all over the country, and a number of other Demwit leaders are crying broke. Good thing that campaign finance "reform" works so well, and everyone plays by the same rules, eh?
One dealbreaker on the horizon is the obviously misnamed Fairness Doctrine. I truly believe that renewed passage of that unconstitutional measure will result in political violence not seen since the 1960s, or perhaps even the 1860s. Attempts at dismantling the Second Amendment will result in a backlash familiar to students of the history of Prohibition.
So far, Obama's been heading pretty strong for the middle, which is what all leaders do. Even Clinton did that -- he pushed NAFTA and GATT through Congress, and both of those were long-term Republican goals. Jew-hating CINOs like Pitchfork Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are of course against both. "Let the world burn" as Hitler said, right boys? Obama's first order of business will probably be to back out on something he's already backed out of, if you'll pardon the terminal pronoun. Here's something I recently posted:Don't worry about it. Zimbabwe's in free fall. There may be some other flyspeck country with something similar (if less severe). No one else. Any country (typically, industrialized country, or major developing country such as India or China) which relies on imported petroleum (pretty much all of 'em) will see a major turnaround in 2009, because crude has dropped almost 70 per cent of its peak price. There will be noticeable drops in all commodities, other than the panic-money precious metals and such -- and those will not hold their value. By the election campaign of 2012, Obama will be taking credit for the boom that is going on at that time, the US gov't current deficit will be much smaller, tax revenues will be up (with or without a continuation of the Bush tax cuts), and the first of the postwar boom babies will be 65 in 2011, and not worried too much about their Social Security. * I reprised that one on Perdogg's annual predictions thread. By contrast, one can read America's Coming Financial Vortex; 6 Predictions for 2009-2012, which will probably be mostly good for a few laughs. My eventual 2009 predictions appear later in Perdogg's thread, and like Perdogg himself, I broke mine down into categories.
Apropos of nothing, check out the popular keywords related to pimping one's blog (12:29 PM Monday, December 1, 2008)
|
|
|
| |
Saturday
Oct 11
2008
1527
4447
1996
62755
|
This Page It was huge, so I'm going to just wipe out a bunch of the old stuff, and you'll have to wait to read anything older than my previous update, which was in May. I may wind up just plastering something in here every day, instead of posting, but my plans on those lines rarely work out.
Over four months I've posted almost three thousand FR topics, and around seven thousand messages; meanwhile my Amazon reviewer ranking has slipped to 1527. Screw it.Bailouts, Purse Strings, Budgets, Taxes, Energy Between the balanced budget fanatics, peak oil greedheads, and the goldbugs, a lot of rumors circulate (and recirculate) about the US' impending economic collapse. During the recent financial crisis -- which is worldwide -- President Bush took a leadership role, a political necessity regardless of what the ultimate course of action turned out to be, or whether anyone was happy about the resulting legislation, executive order, or international agreement.
When the oil bubble popped, commodities markets in general made this weird creaking sound that got louder as everyone aboard started to roll backwards downhill in the dark. It sez here, OPEC has been pricing crude in Euros for years now:
OPEC Has Already Turned to the Euro
GoldMoney Alert
February 18, 2004 ...The source for the euro exchange rate is the Federal Reserve, and I have calculated the euro's average exchange rate to the dollar for each year based on daily data.
|
US Imports of Crude oil
|
|
(1)
|
(2)
|
(3)
|
(4)
|
(5)
|
(6)
|
|
Year
|
Quantity (thousands of barrels)
|
Value (thousands of US dollars)
|
Unit price (US dollars)
|
Average daily US$ per € exchange rate
|
Unit price (euros)
|
|
2001 |
3,471,066
|
74,292,894
|
21.40
|
0.8952
|
23.91
|
|
2002
|
3,418,021
|
77,283,329
|
22.61
|
0.9454
|
23.92
|
|
2003
|
3,673,596
|
99,094,675
|
26.97
|
1.1321
|
23.82
|
We can see from column (4) in the above table that in 2001, each barrel of imported crude oil cost $21.40 on average for that year. But by 2003 the average price of a barrel of crude oil had risen 26.0% to $26.97 per barrel. However, the important point is shown in column (6). Note that the price of crude oil in terms of euros is essentially unchanged throughout this 3-year period.
As the dollar has fallen, the dollar price of crude oil has risen. But the euro price of crude oil remains essentially unchanged throughout this 3-year period. It does not seem logical that this result is pure coincidence. It is more likely the result of purposeful design, namely, that OPEC is mindful of the dollar's decline and increases the dollar price of its crude oil by an amount that offsets the loss in purchasing power OPEC's members would otherwise incur. In short, OPEC is protecting its purchasing power as the dollar declines. Russia's Putin is trying to grab as much European energy market share as he can, and this relates to his invasion of neighboring sovereign country Georgia, and so do some other of his moves. It is a situation analogous to Saddam Hussein's disastrous invasion of Iran in the 1980s, and even moreso, it is analogous to Saddam's disastrous invasion of Kuwait, which precipitated the Gulf War. The price of crude had fallen out of bed prior to the Gulf War, and grabbing Kuwait and its oil fields -- with the wholehearted support of the American left, which rationalized it, mostly by claiming that Kuwait was "an invention of the British" -- was a move by Saddam to increase his share of a less-lucrative market. The upward climb in the value of the US Dollar will negatively impact the price of crude (or, from our standpoint, positively impact it), and that will lead to a fraternal war among OPEC countries, sooner or later.
Interestingly, Europe will get no break at all on its energy costs, if the inference drawn from the above table is correct, and that means it's still beneficial to Putin to grab as much production and distribution capacity as he can. To try to dictate policy and politics in Europe, Putin needs as much European energy market share as he can get.
BTW, my recommendation to any country formerly occupied by the USSR or Russia is to round up all ethnic Russians in your midst, and either deport them to Russia, or just, well, use your imagination.
Europe, meanwhile, has been in recession for some time now, because the Euro-Dollar exchange rates have not been in its favor. That is changing, and with a stable energy price, Europe should be booming within the limits of its centrally mismanaged economy. Ultimately that will benefit the Russians, assuming they can bring more oil and methane supplies online. For that matter, it could even benefit the US to some extent, but mostly the US will benefit from lower energy prices and the recent-years foreign investment in US industries, because energy costs are an important and fluctuating part of production costs and therefore of productivity.
The other day I found one of my quips and updated it by five years:Let's not forget 35 years ago when we learned that we were going to run out of oil eight years ago, and it has since developed that we've currently got a fifty year supply. I also found what may be my original posting (9/9/2005, different forum) of this:There are in excess of 200 million vehicles; if only 84 million burned one less gallon per week, IOW, drove 20 to 25 miles less per week...
42 gallon [US, liquid] = 1 barrel [US, petroleum]
2,000,000 barrel [US, petroleum] = 84,000,000 gallon [US, liquid] Here's a couple plucked from energy keyword:
-
Amid a credit crunch that is decimating consumer psyches and spending power, gasoline demand has dropped nearly 10% from a year ago, even as crude oil prices have fallen. Compared to the same week last year, demand was down 9.5%, the largest year-over-year decrease since September 2006 (the figures aren't seasonally adjusted). The SpendingPulse reports are based on national retail sales, including charges on the MasterCard (NYSE:MA - News) network, as well as estimates for cash and check payments. MacIntyre says the numbers the EIA released Oct. 7 in its monthly forecast, predicting an average of $3.52 per...
-
Worries about declining demand send crude prices plummeting more than $6 a barrel -- Oil prices plunged to a 13-month low Friday as investors worried that the weakening global economy was driving down demand for fuel worldwide. U.S. crude for November delivery sank $6.96 to $79.63 a barrel in electronic trading, its lowest level since crude traded in the high $70 range in September of last year. Investors remain concerned that a crumbling economy was causing businesses and...
Looks like someone at CNN has discovered the wonders of supply and demand as related to pricing -- but of course still got a shot in about "a crumbling economy". As far as a credit crunch, in my experience, those with good credit (and that includes a certain poor guy I know who lives in Michigan and just got a few more thou' in credit line on a new card / account, took about five minutes) will find it simple enough to get more credit. When there are lots of defaulted or otherwise non-performing loans, lenders have to hurry up and write more good loans, even if they are much smaller ones and very numerous. A few years back I did a major (for me) loan application as the $300K newish homes were being vacated and Grand Rapids had ten thousand unsold properties on the market. And just a few months later, I waltzed right in and got a car loan ($13K) somewhere else.
If I lose my job, I'm going to take up male stripping for chicks who like chubby guys.
One last quote regarding balanced budgets, taxes, and the economy, from a FReeper:It's worth remembering that in 1801, when Jefferson became president, the US national debt was around $100 million, about 10 times annual federal revenues. This was literally "the cost of freedom," and would correspond today to a national debt around $30 trillion. Since our actual national debt is $13+ trillion, the government is in better financial shape today than it was in Jefferson's time. And at the time, Jefferson's number one priority was paying down the national debt. So, how did he do it? How does ANY wise government ever increase its revenues? Yes, that's right! JEFFERSON REDUCED GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND CUT TAXES.-- BroJoeK Thank BroJoeK, and for that matter, thanks President Jefferson.Politics, the Election, the Home Stretch ACORN and the rest of the Obama campaign effort is trying to steal the November election, steal the Presidency, and steal our future. In Voters beware: you may have been declared dead and removed from the voter rolls, I posted this handy link, for Michiganders to check online, and obtain a sample ballot in the process:Web Voter Info Center There's an interesting topic, posted from Rush, "If Obama Is Really So Far Ahead, Why Does ACORN Have to Cheat?" That is an interesting observation. Also encouraging are the topics Chet99 has been posting regarding flashbacks to the campaign coverage and polling results that the partisan media shills were spewing throughout 2004, particularly late in the race. I think we remember the reality of the outcome. Of course, put these together, and you may have an explanation for the industry being shown by ACORN in its fraud -- which is most serious in the swing states.Liberation of Iraq and the War on Terror The overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the US occupation, the Surge, and more generally the War on Terror have been complete failures. /sarc The Taliban has broken from al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan, the local tribes are banding together against both. The US has been using high tech missiles to blow the turbans off Central Asian terrorists.Arts, Literature, Humor, and Op-Ed Early in the year the library lent me the unabridged audiobook version of P.J. O'Rourke's on the Wealth of Nations, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I haven't reviewed it, but highly recommend it for commuters (with in-dash CD player) or anyone who can rip a legally obtained copy to iPod or other tiny audio player. Over the years I've read a few of his, and have enjoyed them. Peej recently wrote that he has some kind of cancer, and writes:Not even the most faith-impaired among us shouts: "Damn quantum mechanics!" "Damn organic chemistry!" "Damn chaos and coincidence!" I believe in God. God created the world. Obviously pain had to be included in God's plan. Otherwise we'd never learn that our actions have consequences.-- P.J. O'Rourke By actions, he *may* mean, getting one's photo in the dictionary under "substance abuse". Get well soon, or if the doctor has given you the long face, Havoc!"Secondhand Aztlan Smoke causes drug addiction obesity in global warming cancer immigrant terrorists."-- Lazamataz
|
|
|
| |
Friday
May 30
2008
1444
3875
1712
55639
|
This Page This page was over 125K, so I slipped out a bunch of stuff, just to ease some of FR's burden. I won't be plastering the daily entries into the storage topic for a while, and still plan to start a new topic for that purpose. :') If you must find older stuff, see the links down below, or the Wayback Machine.
Okay, it's about 135K, and I haven't slipped out anything.
My Amazon reviewer ranking has slipped to 1444. I'm going to post the Permalinks to some of my individual reviews just to scare up a few hundred more votes, and see what else happens, and will probably do that in the new topic described above.Politics The US economy isn't about to implode. Ethanol production and corn subsidies haven't driven up the price of food. * ** The OPEC-engineered crude oil price spike is the reason for higher prices at the pump and everywhere else. *
Meanwhile, the Iranians -- who were slated to destroy the dollar by forcing OPEC to price crude in Euros * **, something OPEC has been doing for five or more years -- have entered a hyperinflation situation, are hoarding oil in offshore tankers, have had $35 billion (oops, I should price that in Euros, snicker) vanish from government "coffers" (if $35 billion can "vanish", those aren't really coffers), and the only bright spot for the mullahcracy is that the Hezbollah are back to running Lebanon for the time being (that won't last).
Of course, in the mullahcracy, the whole danged delusional system is one long bright spot.
And just wait until that really, really bright spot right at the end.
Ted Kennedy is going to die of brain cancer.
Jimmy Carter is spreading his message of bigotry and hatred all over the world. And just for good measure, he's advising Hillary that it's time to drop out of the race. Funny, he never took his own advice. See, now, if she were running for dictator somewhere, Carter would be scattering petals for her triumphant entry to the capital. Y'know, as long as it didn't disturb the ethnic purity of the neighborhood.
The election campaign is going much better than hoped. The Demwit Debacle 'til Denver continues, with Hillary now engaged in what I view as the denouement -- the fight over Michigan's and Florida's delegates. Obama generously offered to split those, basically telling Hillary, if you want the delegations seated, each of us will get half, otherwise no deal. The delegations themselves will demand to be seated, which means this fight will probably go to the convention floor if there's no deal. If Hillary wants to fight for the nomination, the convention floor is where that fight will take place. Imagine, Hillary stealing the nomination from The Phenomobama (I may have coined that a few minutes ago) while the nation watches on TV.
That's a nice fantasy. My guess is, the DNC and Howard Dean want to avoid that at all costs, and will broker some kind of face-saving (for Hillary) delegate split (helping Obama) sometime before the convention. Once the Michigan and Florida delegations have been seated in some fashion, our fun is over, and perhaps so is the future of the country.
Failure to vote against Obama is a vote for "universal health care", for reparations, for gun confiscation, for ballot box fixing, for Electoral College jury-rigging, and perhaps three or four (or more) Supreme Court appointments. Who's the RINO now, [characterization deleted]?
As CharlesWayneCT wrote:If by some disaster McCain is our nominee, and by some miracle he holds it together and wins the election, I will be thankful that Obama is not our president, because no matter how much damage McCain can do to conservatism and our country, it's not nearly as bad as Obama's reaction the first time the terrorists strike us again. [McCain Wins !!! McCains Wins !!!!!, 7 posted on 01/27/2008 6:40:18 PM PST] Rush Limbaugh:I don't believe in third-party candidacies. They don't work; they're not going to work; that's not the way to do this... Now, this is going to end up being a major rebuilding effort. You go back and study Reagan in 1976... Gerald Ford got the nod at the convention, but Reagan, at the platform fight, put in every conservative plank he could squeeze in there, he hardly ever mentioned Gerald Ford's name. Then of course that paid off four years later, it paid off in 1978 in the midterm elections to a certain extent... This is not about going to the Republican Party and telling the conservatives, "Leave it, let these people have it." It's about retaking it. And retaking it is not going to happen this year. Retaking it and rebuilding it is going to start in 2010, even if McCain wins... If McCain wins, then the liberal Rockefeller type Republicans, the country club blue-blooders are going to point their fingers at all of us, and they're going to say see? See? This is how you win. You win by being a big tent. You win by welcoming independents and Democrats, and they're going to say this party was never conservative, Reagan was an aberration; Reagan wasn't even conservative... we have people who are conflating and confusing being a Republican with being a conservative. Sadly, they are in many cases two totally different things. [A Third Party Isn't the Way, May 29, 2008] Rush conflates a political party with an ideology, and conflates being a Republican with being a conservative, then notes that other people are doing that. One thing that Rush has said over the years that has stuck with me and has always made sense is his remarks to the freshmen elected in Newt's "Contract with America" sweep in 1994. He told them to remember who voted for them and basically to dance with the one what brung ya. Newt managed to fornicate up beyond recognition that election success.
Reagan was preceded in office by JFK (charismatic do-nothing showoff and adulterer), LBJ (architect of the disaster in Vietnam), Nixon (architect of detente, downfall of Mao, defeat of the USSR in the Middle East, but self-destructive demiurge), Ford (well-meaning caretaker, fiesty, but not a social conservative), and Carter (bungler, incompetent, anti-American, Jew-hater, mean-spirited jackass). Reagan's administration was made possible by the decline in American fortunes set in motion by JFK and LBJ.
Reagan himself bungled in Lebanon and Israel, and failed to set the US on a path to energy independence, locking us in as foreign policy instruments of the nest of vipers that is Saudi Arabia. He did pretty well sometimes with a hostile Congress, but his successes were mostly in his first couple of years in office, and he lost ground. The comic Drew Carey -- a libertarian and drunk, but I repeat myself -- makes reference to Reagan's near-impotence with Congress. Where Reagan really shone was in foreign policy.
Carter had reinstated draft registration in order to look tough in the face of the seizure of the US embassy by the Iranian terrorists, a step that would have been unnecessary had he been tough and stood behind the Shah of Iran. Carter had boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its illegal, violent replacement of their own puppet regime.
Reagan pushed the Soviets around diplomatically -- not militarily, contrary to his image as some kind of warmonger -- and defeated their proxies in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, and various other spots in Africa and whatnot. Despite the nasty remarks about Reagan's age, it was the Soviet leadership which started to die one after the other. By the time the elder Bush (someone absolutely loathed by the Reagan Democrats, which is weird, because he would seem to be one of them anyway) presided over the (first) downfall of the USSR and the overthrow of the Panamanian dictator Noriega. The liberation of Kuwait and defeat of Saddam Hussein by a nominally multinational force, acting under UN auspices, was a military and diplomatic victory, and showed the US was back.
Unfortunately, the US was only back until 1993, when the reprehensible Slippery Bill Clinton entered office and he and his wife and entourage began building their corrupt schemes. While in office he and his criminal gang dismantled Yugoslavia, propped up Moslem terrorism, sold nuke and missile secrets, and waved the green flag along our border with Mexico. The only accomplishments of the Clinton administration are NAFTA and GATT (and the maintenance of SDI), and while I support those, there are some mountains made out of molehills types who don't -- oh, and that includes Barack Hussein Mohammed Obama and Pitchfork Pat Buchanan.
Despite the year-end A.D. 2000 bloodless coup attempt by Al Gore and his cadre of corrupt lawyers, the US elected the younger Bush. He inherited an economic downturn which was worsened by the events of 9/11, and a military malaise which was not. The US is back. Sensitive to his own lack of a ballot box mandate, GWB has finessed, manhandled, and by other means gotten his way on every fight he thought he could win. He made great gains in the midterms of 2002, was reelected in 2004, and then (mostly due to partisan media shilling on behalf of the Dhimmicrats) lost a bit in both houses of Congress in 2006.
And following the changeover early in 2007, the President treated the Demwits in Congress like, well, fill in your own prison cell dating service analogy here (cue "Jailhouse Rock"). Other than blocking the filling of vacancies of the federal bench -- something which should be a campaign issue in 2010, since it won't be this year -- the Demwits in Congress have done nothing but engineer their own demise. Once some of the fossils and lifers are out of office (I'm being careful here), the political outlook will improve.
The Mahdi Army is finished, AQI is finished, and the AQ is reeling everywhere else in the world, even on the Afghan / Pakistan border. Of course, the Iranians are said to be in consultation with AQ about coordinating efforts, but that's probably due to the mullahcracy's intent to launch major war and take over the Middle East.
The country has been sliding left. The election of 2008 can stop that slide, if McCain is elected.
Defeat Hillary, now and in the future."God, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I sure hope McCain wins in November."-- Soliton
|
|
|
