Say Anything Blog

Rick Moran

All hail our great President for Life and his Miracle Socialist Revolution!

  Despite its huge crude reserves, the South American OPEC member relies on hydro-electricity for 70 percent of its power needs, and a drought has hit supply since late 2009.

  “We are ready to decree the electricity emergency, because it really is an emergency,” Chavez said in the first edition of a show on state radio air waves called “Suddenly Chavez.”

  With electricity cuts weighing on Chavez’s popularity ahead of important legislative elections in September, the government blames the shortages on the drought and soaring demand during five years of economic growth until 2008.

  But critics say poor management and under-investment have undermined the power grid and exposed the failings of Chavez’s “21st century socialism” policies during his 11-year rule.

  Analysts say power cuts have played a big part—along with water shortages and high crime levels—in cutting Chavez’s popularity levels from more than 60 percent a year ago to around 50 percent now.

  [...]

I’m sure Venezuelans will be on pins and needles at all hours of the day and night just waiting for Chavez to “suddenly” brighten their lives.

The inevitable results of socialism: shortages and rationing, along with economic stagnation.
This is also why we are in the Obama recession; he is following the same type of policies.

Tom Blumer

This is the real reason that tax revenues are falling, as only the private sector pays net taxes.

Meanwhile, the federal government keeps growing and growing.

There’s a reason why Americans who don’t happen to work for the government or directly benefit from its largesse are not sensing an economic recovery. For them, it’s mostly not happening. ADP’s January employment report showing 22,000 private-sector jobs lost, the latest available jobs-related information available when this column was written, only confirms that feeling.

A look at what has happened to the nation’s inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in the economy, during the last six quarters is sadly instructive. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2009 with the second quarter of 2008, we see that:

  * Even after six months of “recovery,” the economy as a whole has shrunk by almost 2%.
  * Uncle Sam’s level of annualized consumption and “investment” has grown by 8.5%.
  * Despite the incessant pleadings of poverty by most state and local governments, their consumption and “investment” have hardly changed.
  * What remains, i.e., the private sector, is 3% smaller.

The private-sector shrink is really about 1 percentage point higher than indicated, because the above data treats General Motors and Chrysler as if the government and a meddling Congress aren’t in control of them. This of course is nonsense.

Meanwhile, the past year and a half has been a great period to be a federal government employee. While the private sector has shed almost 6.4 million jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis during that time, federal non-postal employment has leaped by over 150,000, a stunning increase of over 7.5%. Two-thirds of the increase occurred during the first eleven full months of the Obama administration, even though the severity of the recession was drop-dead obvious well before he took office. Even higher federal employment is on the horizon.

[...]

There is little doubt that whether or not the economy ever returns to something resembling normalcy again, the government’s influence on our daily lives, absent a historic pushback, will be demonstrably larger.

Chalk all of this up as yet another “accomplishment” of what I have identified and have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy since (imagine that) mid-2008.

Others, including editorialists at the Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily, have more recently named what we are living through “the uncertainty economy.” But the key to understanding what has transpired is accepting the truth about when it really began. Its origins go back to June 2008, when Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid injected enough of the aforementioned uncertainty to cause deep concerns about the future among the people who matter most when it comes to creating and sustaining economic growth: entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and investors.

June 2008 is when the terrible triumvirate went visibly wacko on energy. In the name of “protecting” humanity from the horrible consequences of supposedly settled assertions that have since been exposed as utterly without credible support — namely that global warming is occurring, and that human activity is causing it — they promised to starve the nation of the conventional energy it needs to function, in the likely vain hope that acceptable, affordable alternatives will just, like, well, y’know … show up. The fact that they and their party intend to pursue their radical cap-and-tax plan in spite of the comprehensive scientific debunking that the colossal ClimateGate scandal represents merely proves that the business community’s fear-based mid-2008 reaction was more than justified. Their accurate advance perception was that the “climate change” discussion isn’t really about the environment; it’s about control.

At the same time, Pelosi, Obama, and Reid — but especially Obama — promised to punitively tax the 5% of the nation’s most productive so they could redistribute money to everyone else. These promises were routinely accompanied by heavy doses of business-bashing, pseudo-populist rhetoric. Again, those who saw big trouble on the horizon in mid-2008 from a potentially hostile government have been more than vindicated. Few of us ever thought that a president of the United States would be telling bankers who had money forced onto them at figurative gunpoint but who fully repaid their loans that he still “wants our money back” — and that he would then mobilize/mob-ilize his minions in an attempt to create the pressure to make it happen.

In mid-2008, perceptive entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and investors reacted defensively — as anyone who has decided that they are under attack would — by abandoning expansion plans, trimming employment, and cutting their spending to the bone. Thus, the second quarter of 2008 recovery from the previous quarter’s difficulties abruptly ended. In the third quarter, the recession as normal people define it began.

Matters only worsened in ensuing months. The decades-in-the-making Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-driven housing and mortgage lending debacles, the “stimulus” that has only stimulated bogus claims of jobs “created and saved,” and the Chicago-way conduct of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies have only reinforced the business community’s justifiable siege mentality.

In this POR “Rebound? What Rebound?” economy, it should not surprise anyone that the government has become bigger, bolder, and more intrusive, while a worried private sector has contracted. Is there any good reason to believe that this has not been part of the plan all along?

The economic facts, once again, prove that this is the Obama recession, with no end in sight, as long as this extreme left wing ideologue continues with his insane economic policies.

Find it here

Media Liberals Paint Conservatives as ‘Birthers’, But First Birthers Were Dems

By Lachlan Markay

Here’s something you won’t hear from the liberal media: that whole “birther” conspiracy movement? Yeah, that was started by a couple of Democrats, and neither is named Orly Taitz.

Their names, in fact, are Linda Starr and Philip Berg, according to John Avalon, author of the new book “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America” (just to clarify, he singles out “wingnuts” on both sides of the aisle). Both were die-hard supporters of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign.

Starr was cited as a source of the false documents that got disgraced CBS correspondent Dan Rather fired. Berg is an aggressive Pennsylvania attorney (and former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General) who filed a lawsuit against former President George W. Bush in 2004 alleging he was complicit in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Despite these revelations, it probably goes without saying that the next time David Shuster claims that “most Republicans” are birthers, the theory’s history will go unmentioned.

But perhaps rather than roundly placing the blame on Rush Limbaugh for the birther movement, the New York Times might look into the movement’s actual origins.

And the next time the folks at National Public Radio see fit to suggest that all Tea Party protesters are birthers, maybe they should note that the first birthers were in fact Democrats.

According to Avalon, the movement started just after Clinton conceded defeat in race for the Democratic nomination:

  ...Starr turned her attention to Obama. “I determined that I was going to start digging up every bit of dirt that I could find on him,” she told me after I hunted her down in late 2009, “and that hopefully that I would find something against him that would convince the Democratic Party to dump him and make Hillary the nominee.”

  In the first week of August 2008, as the Democrats were getting ready for their convention in Denver, Starr called Philadelphia attorney Philip Berg and offered a challenge. Berg recalled the conversation for me: “She called me up and said, ‘Have you heard about Obama not being national born?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Well, now it’s for real, and you’re the only attorney in the country with brass balls enough to sue Obama.’ “…

  On August 21, 2008, Berg filed the first Birther lawsuit, requesting an injunction to stop the Democratic Convention from going forward and alleging that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. He faxed notices to the DNC and Obama campaign headquarters, and the next day, he launched the Web site Obamacrimes.com with Starr’s assistance. The lawsuit went nowhere…

[...] 

In their usual style, the lefties try to be on both sides of the issue, claiming conservatives are all “birthers”, while using it against Obama when it suited them politically.
Maybe next they will claim that Hillary is a closet Republican.

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‘Bob, You’d Better Just Pull Back’ — Does Beckel Have a Problem with Women?

Posted by Hannah Giles

I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or oddly flattered when Bob Beckel called me a “ho” Monday night on Sean Hannity’s show. He was discussing James O’Keefe’s current situation and for some reason brought me up. But not the real me: not the 20-year old committed Christian, brown-belt Jiu-Jitsu girl and aspiring journalist, who embarked on a secret summer adventure that caused a major political and media disruption in the fall of ‘09.

Nope, evidently the characters I played in the ACORN videos, Kenya and Eden, had Beckel a little confused.  After he called me a ho, the panel informed him I wasn’t a real hooker, only pretending to be one for the sake of the story. He defends himself by saying I was a very “convincing hooker.”

All I can say is, Beckel would know.

This isn’t the first time he has been befuddled by a young woman’s actions.  In the summer of 2002 Beckel came to know 20-year old “Tiffany,” a professional hooker who, after establishing a business relationship with him, attempted to extort $50,000 in exchange for her not exposing their relationship to his ex-wife and employers.

[...]

Journalism is more my focus right now and watching Beckel’s behavior, I couldn’t help but wonder how he escaped his hooker problems relatively unsullied. A Republican, socially conservative or not, would never survive such drama. The irresistible tale of a greedy hooker and her Muslim pimp would forever resurface anytime the man entered the spotlight or made a major decision. The media would call into question his judgment, based on past events, and relentlessly attempt to taint his public image.

But off Beckel goes, free as a bird. Now he may be over that whole “get involved with an hooker/extortionist” phase. But, based on Monday night’s performance, he is in the “hyper-analyze a twenty-year-old’s clothing and stilettos” phase. If he had said I was a convincing hooker based on the fact that ACORN offices felt comfortable enough with me that they thought I could run a good underage brothel in their local communities, then things would be a little different. We find instead that he is creeping on my body, rather than condemning a corrupt organization.

Hannah smacks a leftie liar with the truth, and also exposes the double standard hypocrisy of the leftie MSM, all in one article.
You go, girl!

By Lachlan Markay

Whatever your feelings about Sarah Palin or her politics, she literally represents the future of conservative messaging. She has shown the nation that a public figure who is absolutely reviled by the mainstream media can not only make a splash, but can dominate the public stage and attract the eyes and ears of the nation in ways almost no other figure can.

For the conservative movement, Palin represents a potential solution to the right’s unending problem of a news media that consistently sides with the political opposition. She is the first public figure to utilize (and, in some cases, dominate) multiple media, including traditional (television, books) and new (Facebook, Twitter) media platforms. The sum of her efforts should be the model for conservative politicians and public figures going forward.

Palin reaches more Americans with a Facebook message (just under 1.3 million) than Keith Olbermann reaches during his 8 p.m. broadcast slot on MSNBC (roughly 1 million). Fox News now has plans to build a television studio in her home in Wasilla. Her recent book Going Rogue has spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and has netted her somewhere in the 8-figure range.

The sum of all this says a lot about Palin, but also about the tremendous power of the media platform she has built for herself (with the help of an intelligent and capable staff). She has gone from a political corpse to one of the most prolific and influential persons in the conservative movement in under a year.

She has managed to do all of this in an atmosphere of extreme hostility from the mainstream press. Perhaps no American political figure is more despised by the nation’s talking heads. This is a teaching moment for all conservatives: she has not only been able to thrive despite the liberal media; she has set up her own channels of communication that rival most major media outlets in terms of the number of people it reaches and the influence it has on the national discourse.

[...]

  “Few public figures not in office have leveraged the nexus between media and political positioning as Sarah Palin has,” said the Washington lawyer Robert Barnett…

[...]

Though few can hope to replicate her appealing public persona, Palin’s media dynamism demonstrates that conservatives can thrive in the public sphere despite a hostile press, if they utilize the tremendous power of new media, and adopt an eclectic approach to the news media.

[...]

Though there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to the news media, especially in the digital age, Palin’s approach is instructive to the extent that it shows that conservatives don’t need to cater to a journlaistic establishment inherently hostile to its message. That should offer hope to all conservatives dispirited by an openly antagonistic press.

With all the backstabbing that goes on here, I thought it was time for a positive and useful message for conservatives.  It’s easy to sit back and snipe at candidates for this and that, but it’s measurably more difficult to actually do something positive for conservatism.
We must get around the MSM censorship of our ideas and principles, and we must provide contrast with their failed policies.
For those who want to win against the Obama blitz, Sarah shows the way.

Rick Moran

Apparently, just about the only people in the country who think you can spend your way out of a recession are Obama and the Democrats - and not many Democrats at that.

Rasmussen proved in his latest survey that the American people usually have an inordinate amount of innate common sense when it comes to spending their money:

  While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

  In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

  To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go.

  Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans, in fact, say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.
  Rejection of Keynesian economics is found across demographic and partisan lines.

[...]

It helps that it is counterintuitive to think that creating massive deficits will fix the economy. Only those who are likely to reject the nose on their face are likely to believe Obama when he says we must spend our way out of the recession.

Once again, it is conclusively proven that the Obama administration is governing against the American people.  This is what ideologues do.

Find it here

The president is no team player

Neil Braithwaite

After losing a close game, the coach put his arm around the young rookie quarterback who came off the bench to try to spark a comeback for his team. In an unsettling retort to his coach’s encouragement, Tom Brady said, “I gave it my best shot coach, but remember, I inherited that situation.”

A young relief pitcher was called in with the game tied in the bottom of the 9th inning with a runner on third and no outs. As he takes the ball from the manager, Mariano Rivera looks into the manager’s eyes and says, “I’ll give it my best coach, but remember, I inherited this situation.”

These two scenarios seem unimaginable in the world of sports. In fact, if they had really happened, you may not have expected these two players would have ever become superstars.

Any player with that attitude would be toxic to a team. And that kind of attitude would not be tolerated for an instant from any coach, teammate, or fan for that matter. Their selfishness and egotism would always upset the balance and continuity of team play, making it very difficult to win. As a detriment to the team, they would be eliminated as soon as possible. (Contracts not withstanding)

However, there have been instances of players like this. Take Terrell Owens for example. He never took responsibility for a loss and always made sure any blame landed on someone else. He was shuffled from team to team and always with the same result - he didn’t last. Owens has great talent, but because he’s not a team player, he’ll always exit early.

I preface my political point with all of this because it is painfully relevant to our situation in America today. After playing for a full year and no longer considered a rookie, it seems obvious that America has recruited a President who continues to exhibit these same toxic characteristics.

For years Barack Obama wanted to play on the team. No, he begged to play on the team. He asked over and over to be put in the game. He was adamant and confident that only he could win. He even promised the team and fans that he would win. Yes, Barack Obama made it abundantly clear to the whole world that he was the one the team had been waiting for and he wanted the ball - in a big way!

[...]

The rookie took the ball and began to swell with pride as he reminded team America in the face of this great adversity—they could count on him—but he also made it very clear to the team that he inherited this whole situation.

With three years left on Obama’s contract, how is America’s franchise player working out for the team now?

Even if the situation he “inherited” were really anywhere near as dire as he keeps claiming(and it wasn’t, by a long shot), it’s his job to take care of business, not keep whining about the past.
With the world economic situation crumbling, and with world terrorism on the rise, with the possiblities of nuclear weapons in the hands of insane jihadists, we need leadership, not excuses!

Find it here

Goodman: Obama ‘A Slow Learner’
Mayor: President May Not Be Welcome In Vegas

LAS VEGAS—Mayor Oscar Goodman has a bone to pick with President Barack Obama after he suggested people shouldn’t spend their college savings on a trip to Las Vegas.

Video: Goodman Wants Obama To Fix Vegas Comment

On Tuesday, during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Obama was trying to make a point that the federal government needs to watch their spending the same way American families do. But he used Las Vegas as an example, for the second time.

“You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t go blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college,” Obama said.

Survey: Will Obama’s Comments Hurt Las Vegas?

Some Las Vegans said Obama should not have picked on Sin City.

“Every time he says something, conventions cancelled, stuff like that. That’s probably what’s going to happen,” said Las Vegan Neil Peterson.

But the mayor may be the most livid Las Vegan.

“He’s not our friend. I don’t know about Nevada, but Las Vegas, he’s sure not our friend,” Goodman said. “He has a real psychological hang-up about the entertainment capital of the world.”

“Everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I’ve got to tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner,” Goodman said.

[...]

This time, other state leaders were quick to stand up for the city, including Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who told Obama to “lay off Las Vegas.”

Although Obama responded to Reid with a letter saying, “I hope you know that during my Town Hall today, I wasn’t saying anything negative about Las Vegas. I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun. There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country’s great destinations. I have always enjoyed my visits, look forward to visiting in a few weeks, and hope folks will visit in record numbers this year.”

[...]

“You don’t cite Las Vegas, a specific example each time you’re talking about spending money. That’s what I’m saying. You can tell people to save their money to send their kids to college. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the end of the statement. You don’t have to say, ‘And blow your money in Las Vegas.’ You can say, ‘Blow it with the local (sports) book.’ I know how to do that too,” Goodman said.

[...]

“I want the president to straighten this out. If not, he’s not welcome in my city, as far as I’m concerned,” Goodman said.

Obama is scheduled to arrive in Las Vegas Feb. 18 t

Like the leftie he is, Obama tried to lie and deny he said what he said, but nobody is buying that load of crap.
This is just more Obama attacking the private sector, which is why the private sector is still shrinking in this Obama recession, while he claims there is a “recovery”.  T’aint so.

Read it here

Katie Couric Gets Some of Her Own Class Warfare Medicine for $14m Salary

By Lachlan Markay

Katie Couric may be getting a taste of her own populist medicine. When the Dow hit 10,000 last October, she (and other network news personalities) used the opportunity to bemoan massive payments to Wall Street bankers. But now the populist sentiment has turned on her. She faces dramatic pay cuts as CBS News downsizes.

Couric, shown in a, er, file photo at right, “makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year! It’s complete insanity,” one CBS News insider told the Drudge Report. “We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a recession. Well look at Katie!”

The employee was referring to Couric’s roughly $14 million annual salary, the highest in network news. That salary may be cut dramatically in the face of massive layoffs at CBS News branches in Washington, San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow.

CBS News has been one of the most outspoken networks against massive Wall Street bonuses and executive payments. The “Early Show” hosted economist Peter Morici late last year to whine that “it’s absolutely unfair for Wall Street to be paying itself record bonuses. The taxpayers made these bonuses possible by loaning Wall Street money at near zero rates. This is all quite unseemly and inappropriate.”

Couric herself has also been critical on occasion. She said last year, “Pick up today’s Wall Street Journal and you’ll read banks and securities firms are on track to pay their employees record amounts this year. And, you pick up The New York Times and you’ll see some workers are being forced to take huge pay cuts.”

[...]

Maybe as a rule of thumb, multi-millionaires should just avoid inciting class warfare, for their own sake if no one else’s.
[Recommend story on Digg.com]

So, a leftie who was squealing about how “Wall Street” executives were getting bonuses while their companies were doing poorly is now getting a big salary while her company, CBS, is doing poorly.  Hypocrisy?
Personally, I think everyone is entitled to get the most money they can negotiate for, and neither the govt nor the news media has anything to say about that in a free country.
Nevertheless, I’m glad to see Katie get smacked by her own rhetoric.

Rick Moran

There’s no other way to describe what Obama has wrought with his wrong headed, misguided policies for homeowners. It is an Epic Fail that has made the situation much worse and delayed the recovery in home values by artificially propping up mortgage holders who can’t pay.

This piece in the New York Times by David Streitfeld doesn’t come out and say this, of course. But all you have to do is read what many homeowners have decided to do about their valueless homes; walk away leaving the bank - and the rest of us - holding the bag:

  After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing.

  New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.

  In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.

  “We haven’t yet found a way of dealing with this that would, we think, be practical on a large scale,” the assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, Herbert M. Allison Jr., said in a recent briefing.

  The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.

Incredible. After pouring $80 billion into the loan modification program, they are still looking for a way to avoid what they should have done in the first place; allow the market to work and wring all of this bad paper out of the system.

The estimate of 5.1 million foreclosures this year is staggering - 10% of all home mortgages might go into default. And yet, the Obama administration’s answer is more government intervention.

[...]

So congratulations are in order for our president. It’s very difficult to make a very bad situation catastrophically worse - something he managed without much trouble at all.

Obama’s “answer” to the problem he caused seems to be to try to re-inflate the housing bubble.  This is sheer economic insanity, since what we need is to allow the market to find its own level without govt interference.
Fiscal conservatism works, rewarding bad fiscal behavior doesn’t work.

By Gene J. Koprowski

A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what its critics say is sloppy science—adding to a growing scandal that has undermined the credibility of scientists and policymakers who back the U.N.‘s findings about global warming.

In the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), issued in 2007 by the U.N.‘s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists wrote that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest in South America was endangered by global warming.

But that assertion was discredited this week when it emerged that the findings were based on numbers from a study by the World Wildlife Federation that had nothing to do with the issue of global warming—and that was written by a freelance journalist and green activist.

The IPCC report states that “up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”—highlighting the threat climate change poses to the Earth. The report goes on to say that “it is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems ... such as tropical savannas.”

But it has now been revealed that the claim was based on a WWF study titled “Global Review of Forest Fires,” a paper barely related to the Amazon rainforest that was written “to secure essential policy reform at national and international level to provide a legislative and economic base for controlling harmful anthropogenic forest fires.”

[...]

The rapidly accumulating scandals surrounding climate change research appear to be driving the public away from its support for government measures to intervene. On Wednesday, Yale University and George Mason University released a survey showing that just 57 percent of respondents believe global warming “is happening.” That was down 14 percentage points, from 71 percent, in October 2008. Fifty percent of people said they were “very” or “somewhat” worried about global warming, down 13 points from two years ago.

Another poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked respondents to rank 21 issues in terms of their priority. Global warming came in last. 

Data faking scandal, phony glacier shrinking report, and now a false claim about rain forest endangerment.
What will it take to cut all our spending on this AGW hoax?

by John Hawkins

1) Liberals believe they can change human nature.

[...]

However, most people care more about what they’re having for lunch today than an earthquake that kills ten thousand people on the other side of the world. We’re just built that way and no amount of sensitivity training, preschool classes, or Michael Moore documentaries is going to “fix” it.

2) Liberals believe we can talk everything out with our enemies. One of the weirder quirks of liberalism is their belief that many of our bitterest enemies have rational reasons for disliking us and that can easily be talked away if they realize we’re good people. Hence, the common liberal refrain of, “Why do they hate us?” The reason this is a particularly odd belief is that liberals don’t even believe this about conservatives in the United States. The average liberal thinks that if we’re nice enough, we can reach an understanding with Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck can’t be reasoned with.

3) Liberals don’t have enough respect for our culture and traditions

[...]

4) Liberalism is a fundamentally immoral political philosophy.

[...]

They consider their fellow travelers to be on the side of the angels, while the people who disagree with them are treated as evil. This leads to an “anything goes” mentality when dealing with their foes: ignoring the law via a “living constitution,” politically based prosecutions, shouting down opposing speakers, and treating lying about their agenda or opponents to be moral. On the other hand, liberals will support other libs, no matter how corrupt, sleazy, or vile they are as long as they’re politically useful to the left. See Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, John Murtha, and Robert Byrd for examples of that. In other words, as Margaret Thatcher has said of the Left, “For them, the end always seems to justify the means.”

5) Liberals believe merely being liberal makes them good people. Liberals who’re obsessed with money think they’re compassionate because they give away other people’s tax dollars. They believe they care more about the earth than other people, even as they fly around in private jets, because they babble on about global warming. They can be dumb as a rock, but believe they’re smarter than most other people because they’re liberals. In other words, in the minds of most liberals, liberalism is an all-purpose substitute for actual virtue instead of just another political philosophy.

6) Liberals have too much faith in government.

[...]

7) Liberals have minimal interest in whether the programs they support work or not. To most liberals, whether a government program betters people’s lives is completely irrelevant to whether they’ll support it. A program that doesn’t work and costs billions, but sounds compassionate and helps Democrats politically is a huge success in the eyes of the Left. Once you understand that liberals think this way, their baffling support for programs that make no “common sense” is much easier to understand.

While the items listed above are more accurately ascribed to ideologues rather than “liberals”, it turns out that the faith of those on the left is based on their ideology, not any practical, real world considerations or reasoning, so they all apply to our present lefties.

Ed Lasky

Obama rolled out his massive $3.8 trillion budget yesterday and, as Politico writes, it “shows that, like any politician, he’s focused on rewarding friends and not enemies. Just take a look at the huge increase in education. Teachers unions are a strong component of the Obama coalition.”

“Like any politician” - does someone in the media finally get it? During the campaign and afterwards, we were fed an image that he transcended politics, was our Savior, was bipartisan, was ‘like a God”. Pastor Jeremiah Wright was right. He knew Obama like few others did and he told us that Obama was ‘just a politician”. Aside from that observation, there is a huge increase in small business “lending”.

  The president touted the importance of small businesses to the economy at length during his State of the Union, and his budget gives small companies big advantages. Obama’s budget completely eliminates capital gains taxes for investments in the smallest tier of business and provides for a total of $28 billion in loan guarantees aimed at businesses with few employees or little revenue.

The $28 billion in loan guarantees for small business will be accompanied by a 21% increase in the Small Business Administration’s budget to $994 million. Perhaps these are in a response to the image of Obama as being anti-business; perhaps they are a response to head off the Chamber of Commerce’s campaign to inform America of Obama’s anti-business policies. Or perhaps the team from Chicago has a different purpose in mind

Both these programs provide plenty of ammo for patronage and pork. The loan guarantees will be channeled to people, companies, and areas that Obama and his team want to reward. They might as well be written off when granted because they will be a disaster.

  In fiscal year 2008, the SBA will guarantee $28 billion in loans, mainly through its flagship 7(a) loan programhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2_bing.gif. Plenty of evidence indicates, however, that the time has come for Congress to abolish the SBA loan programs. Here are just three reasons.

  First, academic literature shows that private capital markets already efficiently allocate loans to small businesses. Banks give credit at the right price to companies that deserve it at that price, including small businesses.

  [...]

We know that stimulus dollars have been focused on rewarding Obama supporters and Democratic special interest groups; Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts.The loan guarantees will flow the same way. They are not loans that will be repaid; they are welfare under a different name.

So, the free market works, and rigging markets with taxpayer money brings corruption and waste.
What else is new?

Rick Moran

A couple of New York Democrats are in hot water over a purported political slush fund masquerading as a non profit organization.

[...]

  A nonprofit founded with help from two New York legislators—Rep. Gregory Meeks and state Sen. Malcolm Smith—functions more like a slush fund than a charity, according to an ethics watchdog group, which plans to file a state ethics complaint against Smith this week.

  As The Post reported yesterday, New Direction Development Corp., which was created in 2001 with help from the two Queens Democrats, appears to have used its funds to pay for meals, entertainment, consulting fees and IRS penalties.

  Some $150,000 in donations, including thousands the community raised to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, remains unaccounted for, according to Ken Boehm, head of the National Legal and Policy Center.

  “When you see lots and lots of consulting fees with large amounts flashing around, at some point one wonders if an elected official is trying to sell their office,” said Boehm.

  “Sen. Smith, with respect to New Direction, violated several provisions of New York state law,” he said.

  [...]

  When his constituents helped raise close to $15,000 to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, Meeks promised “every dime, every dime” would go to a group of 30 families displaced from New Orleans.

  But there is no record the charity he and Smith founded along with their wives ever delivered more than $1,392 of aid.

  Between 2001 and 2006, Smith helped funnel at least $56,000 to the charity through earmarks.

  Smith refused to comment.

And what’s a little New York sleaze without Governor Paterson being involved. Turns out that the charity’s headquarters were in the law offices of a woman who served as campaign treasurer for not only Smith and Meeks. but Governor Paterson as well.

And the charity was founded with the help of a Paterson crony - who just happened to have recently received a $300 million contract to build a racetrack/casino.

Never let an opportunity for graft pass by the wayside if you’re a New York Democrat.

The Dem culture of corruption: the gift that keeps on giving…to itself.

For those who believe he should be able to tell his side of the story before any rush to judgment, tune in!
BTW, he is free on $10,000 bail, which is an indication that he is not viewed as a serious offender, despite some efforts to accuse him of terrorism and serious felonies.
It should be a good show.