Author Archives: pg - your humble messenger
I shall return!
I will be going out of town for a week or so. Traveling is not is easy for me, still I am looking forward to it. I still love you, Dave. I don’t want to fight. I think Mo is wonderful. Have a good week everyone.
New Layout
How many of you keep hitting the “edit” button on a post because it is where the read more button and the comment button used to be on the old layout?
Thanks Wes!
I know you still read the blog Wes. I wanted to say thank you for talking up “The Wire”. HBO has been running it from the start on their “on demand service”. I just finished season one and I’m halfway through season two. It is incredible. Omar is one of the best characters ever! Thanks Wes!
No Free Healthcare Lunch.
Sorry Dave, people need to be forced to pay their own way.
In seeking to follow ConClubs unwritten rule of turning comments of over 150 words into its own post I offer this little rant in response to a comment Dave recently made…
Covering tens of millions of illegals would just be silly beyond belief. And anything that requires compulsive participation is obviously and blatantly unconstitutional.
We already pay for their care as it is, Dave. Their visits to emergency rooms and “free” clinics are paid by us. Their admissions to hospitals are covered by us already. We do it in a very inefficient way as it is, Dave. We need a system where they pay their way too through taxes.
Read the rest of this entry
Just a few of my concerns about Obama Care.
My friend Andre requested that I address the Democrat Healthcare proposal. Here is my reply.
It is kind of ironic, but I have spent the last week at the hospital for my annual reevaluation. They even quite literally kicked my tires. I hope Andre is still reading the blog, my apologies for not responding sooner. I will try to be brief.
As I write this it appears all but certain that the plan dubbed “Obama Care” will pass through House in some fashion tomorrow morning. I believe we will all regret this. Not all of us for the same reasons mind you, but all of us will have reasons for regret.
Read the rest of this entry
They said it!
White House advisers are considering recommending alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be tried in a military court instead of a civilian one in New York City, a senior administration official told CNN on Friday.
Progressive activists blasted the potential administration switch.
“If this stunning reversal comes to pass, President Obama will deal a death blow to his own Justice Department, not to mention American values,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“If the president flip-flops and retreats to the Bush military commissions, he will betray his campaign promise to restore the rule of law, demonstrate that his principles are up for grabs and lose all credibility with Americans who care about justice and the rule of law.”
The Mount Vernon Statement vs. the Sharon Statement. Was change needed?
Dave recently posted the Mount Vernon Statement on here. I said I had some objections to it. DFV said he could find not anything ojectionable in the document. I am so glad he formed his reply this way. I had said there was no reason to change the Sharon Statement. This post is in rebuttal.
Do you know who crafted the Sharon Statement? Do you know where and why? That information will provide a needed perspective if one is not familiar with it.
I am surprised at the Scribe, especially in light of his stand on religion and God that he did not notice, or if he did, did not mind the changes made with Sharon. Let me mention my concerns about those changes.
Okay, call me a pissant contrarian; but enough already. These people, the author’s of Mount Vernon, all lobbyists and opinion sellers as I said on the thread, feel the need to reorganize things again. Let’s really bring God into the Sharon Statement, the conservative movement. Let’s quadruple the verbiage of the Sharon Statement. And the best one: Let us write this as if conservatism predates the Constitution. What?
After last nights Who performance at the Super Bowl – your messenger offers something a little less tarnished, a little more raw.
What a great song. What a great album.
I can not afford President Obama’s anger. Can you?
I enjoy reading Investor’s Business Daily. Their editorials are always to the point.
How’s That Revenge Working For You, Mr. President?
Since President Obama began a series of proposals to tax big banks and limit their size and activities, wrapped in angry rhetoric, the S&P 500 has tumbled 8%. Bank bashing isn’t the only reason: European debt fears, China’s lending crackdown and broader uncertainty over taxes and other government policies all are playing a role.
However, the recent market sell-off underscores a basic point: Populism may seem like a political necessity, but it’s an economic luxury. If this were a solid, sustainable recovery, bank bashing or other populist rhetoric and proposals probably wouldn’t have a major impact. But recent economic growth is largely the result of government stimulus and inventories stabilizing. There’s a risk, or at least a real fear, that the economy could stall out or even slip back into recession as those temporary factors ebb.
The S&P is down another 1.5% today. BTW, I can’t afford the populism from the right either.
“Need a body cry?”
J.D. Salinger, the famously reclusive author whose novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,’’ was one of the best-selling books of the 20th century, died at his Cornish, N.H. home. He was 91.
Mr. Salinger died of natural causes Wednesday, his son, Matt, said in a statement from Harold Ober Associates, Mr. Salinger’s literary agency.
We all read him, did we not? He moved a generation of Americans. We would not have had “A Field of Dreams” without him.
I resented having to read him in school, not as much as being forced to read “Lord of the Flies” though. I thought Holden Caulfield was an angst ridden twerp when I was one too. I never understood why they taught with “The Catcher in the Rye,’’ and others like “A Separate Peace”, when there was Hemingway and always more Shakespeare to read. Then again, like I said, the novel moved a generation. Besides, I like some weird writers from New Hampshire, even if some of them don’t like me anymore.
I just trashed several semesters of 1960s and 1970s high school literature. What say you in response?
“No, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way.” Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park.
One does not have to be a Nazi, socialist, communist or even a “narcissist” to have their good intentioned ideas result in unintended bad 
consequences. All living things, like the organizations man creates, want to grow. Governments are a prime example of this.
The level of public spending is only one indication of the state’s power. America’s federal government employs a quarter of a million bureaucrats whose job it is to write and apply federal regulations. They have cousins in national and supranational capitals all round the world. These regulators act as force multipliers: a regulation promulgated by a few can change the behaviour of entire industries. Periodic attempts to build “bonfires of regulations” have got nowhere. Under Mr Bush the number of pages of federal regulations increased by 7,000, and eight of Britain’s ten biggest regulatory bodies were set up under the current government.
The authors of this piece in the Economist do not always color with the shades I would have picked. They do at least outline the debate in clear terms.
I am just your humble messenger.
Tommy can you hear me? “The trouble is that we are making ourselves more and more difficult to be heard,” said Dr Drake. “We are broadcasting in much more efficient ways today and are making our signals fainter and fainter.” Your messenger thinks this is a good thing. He has a nineteen fifties view of aliens – they aint friendly.
FTW! Doug’s on going drive for excellence. “Douglas Robinson has been arrested so many times in the last two years – 74 times, to be exact – that social service agencies in the area put him on a list of people they wanted to help the next time he was arrested.”
The stewardess asks: “Is that a gecko in your underwear, or are you just happy to see me?”. A German leaving New Zealand has a reptile party in his pants. “Kubus was caught by wildlife officials at Christchurch International Airport on South Island in December, about to board an overseas flight with 44 geckos and skinks in a hand-sewn package concealed in his underwear.”
“I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I’m homosexual. I’m a genius.” You know what? He was. Life, the magazine, has prepared a pictorial unmasking everyone’s muse “Famous literary drunks and addicts.”.
I am just your humble messenger. (Seriously abridged edition)
Poor Paul needs another dance partner it seems. “He Wasn’t the One We’ve Been Waiting For!” All your messenger has to say is that the ides of March are coming. Every one seems to want to play Brutus to poor Barry’s Caesar. Your messenger thinks the Progressives plan for the elections is to throw Barry under the bus. It took the Republicans six years to sacrifice Bush. That is change for you.
“Now all of the sudden Volcker gets a “rule” to call his very own? In the world of politics, getting a “rule,” or better yet a “doctrine,” is not-quite having an airport named after you, but it ain’t far off.” The “Volcker Rule”? It’s change we can believe in! Oops, isn’t that Paul “Stagflation” Volcker? Your messenger thinks that he is change for the worse. You can believe in that.
Glenn Beck escapes handlers and works without a net again.
“I want a chastity belt on this man,” he said, while his producer tried to justify Brown’s comments. “I want his every move watched in Washington. I don’t trust this guy…This one could end with a dead intern. I’m just saying, it could end with a dead intern.”
Why do they give this guy a microphone? Well at least he wasn’t crying when he said it. Watch his performance art caught on video at the link.
ADD: Before somebody trys to support this nimrod as a great conservative thinker, check out what others have to say about the looney tune.
AP declares Brown the winner. Coakley concedes.
I got the news from MSNBC and Rachel Maddow. God bless them.
‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink…’
I do not know how to put suffering like this in perspective.
Death, devastation and deprivation prevail in Haiti’s capital, as the full extent of the country’s humanitarian crisis is being revealed to the world. The international community is rushing aid to earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince in the face of logistical challenges and with the knowledge that Haiti’s needs far outpace anything that can be delivered in the short-term.
I am a bit partial to Catholic Relief Services as one might imagine. One reason is that just about every penny goes to those in need. Whoever you choose to give to, please just give.
I had a terse, witty and intellectually challenging post ready, but now it seems pointless. This reminds me of how life is really not an intellectual exercise to be explained away.
A hole in sky is closing and now we are going to freeze!
Those of us who remember the seventies, okay the seventies when you weren’t in college, will recall that we were warned that there was a global COOLING coming! In fact a Mini 
Ice Age was likely. Well the frost is here my friends. The Brits are freezing their buns off and some there fear a nat gas shortage. China may have factories shut down due to the cold. Stock up on OJ because the orange crop is dying. Oil and nat gas are going up, which is bad unless you own royalties or live in Alaska. The thermometer on my porch reads -4 degrees and it is 10:30 am here in beautiful Centennial, Colorado.
There has long been speculation about the ozone hole over Antarctica. Is it there? Was it there? Why is or was it there? Well there is this guy in Canada, and they know cold up there, who thinks there is a hole in the sky caused by CFCs and it has been closing. That is good right? Well maybe. It seems CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons ) were all that was holding back the frost.
A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years.
Professor Lu seems to be saying, if your humble messenger reads him right, that the environmental movement solved global warming without knowing they were doing it when they got the CFC restrictions passed. Neat trick that!
“Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases … decreased around 2000,” Lu said. “Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate.”
Is it just your humble messenger or doesn’t this underline the validity of the law of unintended consequences? This time it might have worked in our favor. What about next time?
Get out your hairspray boys and girls, start bleeding freon directly into the air, you might be all there is preventing New York looking like it did in Artificial Intelligence: AI.
Your messenger’s topical quotes of the day.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
Great and powerful words. If being a patriot is extreme, the I gladly accept the label. Only thing is, it is not 1775 and I am not Patrick Henry. I also love the following quote.
Since we are on the topic of Rich, it gives your messenger a chance to mention this…
The October 14, 2007 Times featured Stephen Colbert guest-writing most of Maureen Dowd’s column. In that article, Colbert satirically wrote: “Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay. There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.”
I thought Colbert was halarious at the time when he wrote that Column. Truth be told, I am a Rich junkie.
Fairey tales of the liberal cultural and intellectual elite!
Shepard Fairey’s true colors
By Charlotte Allen
The Echo Park artist has built his career on a combination of vandalism and expropriation of other people’s images.
Lang’s overlay put the lie to Fairey’s claim, but it took the artist months to concede that he had used, as the AP had maintained from the beginning, the close-up. Even now, he insists that expropriating the image was “fair use.”
So why wasn’t the jig up as soon as Lang posted his evidence? Because Fairey was “one of us” in the eyes of the fiercely liberal cultural and intellectual elite.
Fairey, by his own description, is a man of the left. His work, as his gallery put it in a 2007 news release, critiques the “underpinnings of the capitalist machine.” Fairey first became the darling of political liberals with a poster in which he depicted then-President George W. Bush as a vampire, complete with fangs and blood dripping down his chin. After the Obama campaign officially incorporated Fairey’s “Hope” poster series into its electoral efforts, Obama sent the artist a letter, included in an exhibit of his work at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, saying, “I am privileged to be a part of your art work and proud to have your support.”
Privileged? Proud?
Fairey has built his artistic career on a combination of vandalism, via graffiti-like hit-and-run art, and an expropriation of other people’s images. While he insists he uses the art of others only as “reference points,” his critics have termed his work outright plagiarism. Since the mid-1980s, he has stenciled on big-city buildings and small-town sidewalks his trademark anti-capitalist image “Obey Giant” (lifted from an image of a well-known wrestler whose trademark-holders threatened Fairey with a lawsuit in 1993). The New Yorker’s art critic, Peter Schjeldahl, wrote reverently of the works, calling them “epic poetry in an everyday tongue” in an article in February.
Isn’t he sooooo special? I wonder if Wes has Fairey’s Bush as the vampire poster on the wall? What is next? Is Obama going to sue Larry and Andy Wachowski for basing the character Neo on the president’s life without attribution? I have it on good authority (Dave), that Neo is the name used on Obama’s “real” birth certificate.
I just have to ask.
Balloon boy case a hoax, charges coming: Colorado sheriff
The “balloon boy” case that sparked international media news attention Thursday was a hoax that will result in criminal charges against the boy’s parents, Larimer County, Colo., Sheriff Jim Alderden said Sunday.
I freely admit that the recently arrested terror suspect, who has not been waterboarded (yet), Najibullah Zazi lives in mt neighborhood. I am not related to him though, well not to my knowledge. I need to know if any of you Northern Colorado Clubbers are related to the Balloon Family.
There is no truth to the rumor that the father, a meteorologist, is a leading spokesperson for the UN on climate thingy theory.
They wouldn’t do that, would they?
World at risk from China forex policy: Treasury
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — China’s foreign-exchange policy risks “unwinding” some of the progress made in reducing global trade imbalances during the financial crisis, the U.S. Treasury said Thursday in its latest report on foreign-exchange trading.
But the department repeated its previous finding that China was not formally manipulating its currency.
The absence of a finding of manipulation is important. Under the legislation prompting the review, a finding of manipulation would set off a series of steps that might end in the U.S. imposing duties on Chinese imports.
The U.S. said it was not pleased with Chinese foreign-exchange policy.
”The rigidity of the renminbi and the reacceleration of reserve accumulation are serious concerns which should be corrected to help ensure a stronger, more balanced global economy,” the Treasury report said.
To outside analysts, China has clearly pegged the currency to the dollar.
Carl Weinberg, chief international economist at High Frequency Economics, said the People’s Bank of China has pegged the yuan at around 6.82 RMB to the dollar since July 2008.
That followed three years of steady yuan appreciation.
They keep buying dollars. All these countries posturing around FOREX and trade. Making threats and then professing friendship and the will to work together. I have to tell you it just amazes this hillbilly. Why have China, the USA and the world been trying to increase domestic consumption within China? China will have to deal with an aging population soon. Deficits run amuck. What are we gonna do? Oh the humanity! It is the end of Western Civilization! Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.
The best is below the fold…
Loonie Toons & How about the Greenback Andre?
The Loonie is on par with the dollar. The Beast can use his Loonies in the slots on the reservations now I bet.
The dollar is at the same lows against the Euro as it was last year when Andre made an issue out of it. How is it working for you now ‘Dre?
You know what Larry Summers? You’re right.
“The American people have not become less capable of entrepreneurship,” Summers, who heads Obama’s National Economic Council, said in last week’s interview. “They have not become less dedicated to hard work, and the productive potential of this economy has not declined.”
Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser
Moi no fascist capitalist, moi be a socialist! More violence from the radical Left.
Turkey: student protester hurls shoe at IMF chief
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA (AP) – 6 hours ago
ISTANBUL — A student journalist threw a shoe at IMF Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and ran toward the stage shouting “IMF get out!” as the finance official answered questions at a university in Istanbul.
The white sports shoe bounced off another student’s head but missed the IMF chief before landing beside him on the speaker’s platform. Some students applauded. Strauss-Kahn moved to the side, and a security guard rushed to protect him.
Other guards quickly blocked the man — a student and a journalist with a small left-wing newspaper — from reaching the platform. They pushed him to the floor, covered his mouth with their hands and then dragged him from the hall.
But Keith Olbermann was just using hyperbole, don’t ya know…
Idiots say idiotic things. Especially the ones who do it for a living.
Hey, like you know, it could have happened to anyone. Roman Polanski on stumbling into rape.
I know now it was, it was not the right thing to do,” he said at the time. “But I was, there was no premeditation, you know, it was something that just happened.
Roman Polanski – Explaining how raping a 13 year old girl after plying her with alcohol and drugs was not intentional. Sure Roman. What is more outrageous is this B.S. here regarding Polanski’s detention in Switzerland…
“Seeing him alone, imprisoned while he was heading to an event that was due to offer him praise and recognition is awful. He was trapped,” French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said at a news conference Sunday. “In the same way there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America, that has just shown its face.”
Mitterrand said French President Nicholas Sarkozy is paying close attention to the case and that the French consulate may try to visit with Polanski today if allowed.
“I’m offering my support to Polanski as a French citizen and as the minister for culture. Justice has been denied to him many times in his life, and beauty is something that he has brought though his films,” he said, calling Polanski a “wonderful man” and “one of the greatest directors of all time.If the world of culture does not offer its support to Polanski, then that would mean there is no more culture in this country.”
I understand. I really do.
E and Beast I get both of your posts and the reasons for them. I was just wondering if either of you had heard of the “page-break” concept?
A stock tip for Jeff
I know you have all your money hoarded in gold Jeff, but I have a great tip for you. The company is Tenet Healthcare Corporation. The stock has gone up 375% YTD. It is a can’t miss for you. Check out the symbol.
Just trust me, health care is not about trust.
Should I trust health insurance companies? Wes doesn’t it would appear based on his comments on this thread. I am not sure if Wes has read the posts I have been making regarding health care. In any event let me disabuse him of something: I really could careless where people put their “trust”. He does not “trust” insurance companies – so? (ADD: I do not mean “so” as in snubbing Wes. I mean it as in – “So, should we?”)
People constantly say “I don’t trust the government with my health care because they want to take away freedom and control my life”. Or they state the opposite “I don’t trust insurance companies because they just want to make money so they don’t pay claims”.
For what it is worth I believe most people are trustworthy and have the best of intentions, and that includes our president. So what? The problem is that we do not act rationally. The reason why it makes more sense for private industry to provide goods and services is because the profit motive provides a fiscal discipline. Not because they are any more or less trustworthy than the government.
Markets do not always behave rationally. Enlightened self interest is often not really enlightened or rational. We are flawed as individuals. Our companies and corporations where we act collectively are flawed also. Economic and financial models break down.
Yes it is true that insurance companies at times do not behave in the public interest. The thing is the government doesn’t either despite its intentions, and not because Nancy Pelosi is stupid, or because Obama is an evil Nazi. Just because markets and business do not always behave rationally does not mean that the regulations designed to correct them are always rational as written or implemented. They have unintended consequences also. The government is also inefficient in how it delivers health care. Medicaid is a bigger disaster than Medicare.
Thank You, you little f*****
‘Thanks, you little f*****’: Family horrified after restaurant bill makes clear what waiters thought of Molly, two
Most parents have experienced their young children getting restless when waiting for a meal in a restaurant.
But not many get the bill at the end of it with a message describing their offspring as a ‘little f*****’.
This is what happened to parents Craig and Kimberley Cartin at a Mexican restaurant in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where they received the receipt which had ‘Thankyyou littell f*****’ written on it.
Just when you thought you got rid of me…
I have been a little under the weather this past little while. Since my absence started it seems the posts and comments from all have dramatically increased. You sure know how to make a guy feel good! Ditch PG and lets pitch-a-bitch.
I have to declare to all that:
- Andre is a superior human being.
- His school – The Great Colorado State University – plays superior football to the lowly Buffs.
- CSU is the Harvard of the foothills.
- CU is, well is, Buffalo Chips.
How much for those tires? You are #@%%#%^ kidding me right?
I know this cat, ok it is me, but please don’t tell anyone, that needed some new wheelchair tires. This is his story. He has a million of them.
The tires on my manual wheelchair were bald. I have two chairs, one power (no, do not call it electric please) and one manual. That is important as we shall see. My power chair was $17,000.00 and paid for by private insurance. My manual chair was donated to me by the private rehabilitation hospital I stayed at for five months. My private insurer would only pay for one chair at a time. That is what the contract says – don’t ya know! I had Colorado Medicaid and Medicare but they will not pay for the “luxury” of a second chair. Someday I will tell you just what Medicare will pay for when it comes to wheelchairs (we already have mentioned commode chairs on another thread).
Anyway, after decades of handling thousands of SCIs and TBIs the dedicated therapists, doctors and nurses at my hospital decided it would not be good for patients to be without a “luxury” backup chair. Of course what do they know really? I mean the clerks at Medicare understand that effective treatment is to leave that patient in bed to soil themselves (yes I do have an issue with that), so what is the problem with leaving them in bed for days or weeks while the primary chair is fixed? I mean the silly therapists, doctors and nurses think skin sores, UTIs, painful spasms and a horrible quality of life that being confined to bed means is important. Medicare knows that saving $2000.00 on a chair is what is known as effective rationing of a scarce resource.
Your messenger’s quote of the day. Or Obama knows nothing about health care! Or how to invalidate your opponents position with snark!
OK! OK! OK! I am going to be witty here!
By being mistaken Michelle’s husband Barry proves he is a know nothing fool.
At the town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., Obama said, “We have the AARP onboard because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.” He added, “AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.”
But Tom Nelson, AARP’s chief operating officer, said, “Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”
This proves his position is just plain wrong. Hey – Do you think this guffaw causing ooops statement might lead to anal and scat jokes about the man on Sadly, No! ?
As my friend Andre said…
Is Charles Schumer giving us an example of “talking out of both sides of your mouth”?
Democrats May Bypass Republicans on Health Plan, Schumer Says
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) — Senate Democrats may decide to pass a U.S. health-care overhaul without Republican support if some opposition lawmakers don’t agree to a plan by mid-September, Senator Charles Schumer said.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus set a Sept. 15 deadline for getting a bipartisan agreement among six senators on the panel who are negotiating a deal.
“If we cannot produce a bipartisan solution by then, you have to wonder if the Republicans would ever be willing to agree to anything,” Schumer said on a conference call with reporters yesterday. “We will enact health-care reform by the end of the year. If the Republicans are not able to produce an agreement, we will have contingencies in play.” Read the rest of this entry
Even in Dana Pico’s own “City of the Lost” – Philadelphia, they understand Obama’s vision on health care all too well.
Audience Shouts Down Sebelius, Specter at Health Care Town Hall in Philadelphia
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter got a preview Sunday of the tough sell lawmakers will face over health care reforms.
Among those at odds with the officials touting the $1 trillion, 10-year plan was a woman who earned loud applause when she said she doesn’t want Washington interfering with her health care choices.
“I look at this health care plan and I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. Medicaid is broke, Medicare is broke, Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a cash for clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy? No sir, no,” she said.
This lady’s comments remind me of the saying – “Socialized Medicine – Delivered with the efficiency of the Motor Vehicle Department, with the compassion of the IRS.”
I believe in effective and efficient universal coverage. I do not like the costly patchwork that we have now. I believe in portability. Our established policy of tying health coverage to a job is just simply wrong. I believe that exclusions and denials based on “uninsurabilty” should be abolished. Group rates based on the law of large numbers can effectively control the cost of insurance to individuals (premiums), and the exposure that insurance companies have through equal distribution of risk. Out of pocket expenses can be reduced by choice through elective coverage as is the case now with many group and individual policies.
We will need the government to force insure the percentage of the population that can afford coverage but does not carry it. Let the Populist-Libertarian-Luddites (PLL’s) complain all they want, but we already pay the uninsured’s health costs as a society. Those that can pay should regardless of how likely their potential loss is.
Health care is a form of welfare for part of society already. The government should on a needs basis pay the premiums in a private plan that is distributed equally among providers for those unable to pay for it themselves. Before my PLL friends complain about “them people will be taking my money and stuff”, keep in mind that they already do. This coverage should extend to legal and illegal alike. We again already pay for this. This would be a formal acknowledgement – yes - but also more efficient.
Abolish Medicare and Medicaid. They do not work well. They can not be tweaked to be more efficient. Get the government out of the health provider business and make the insurance industry pull the load they were designed to pull. There is nothing scarce about health care at all. It is not a “precious resource”. It is a commodity that we have plenty of. If we remove government interference in the market AND institute simple but effective insurance reforms we can control costs. The curve can be bent. Just not by the government.
The “Government Option” and the Single Payer system with its resultant socialized medicine is neither needed nor preferred. Sometimes ‘da peop’le get it right.
ADD: An excellent article on Medicaid in City Journal today. Make sure to read “The Making New York’s Private Health Insurance More Affordable” blurb at the end. There is plenty of money in the system, multiples of the funds required in fact. The key is to get rid of the hybrid system.
Da evil businessmen at Goldman Sachs give a 23% return to da government on eight month loan.
Here is the news for what it is worth to all the populist middle class people who don’t pay any federal income tax anyway.
July 22 (Bloomberg) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s repayments to the government of last year’s bailout money, including an agreement today to repay warrants, generated a 23 percent annualized return for U.S. taxpayers.
Goldman Sachs agreed to the Treasury’s request for $1.1 billion to repay warrants the government received when it invested $10 billion in the New York-based firm last October. The payment is in addition to $318 million in preferred dividends.
That 23 percent return compares with the 42 percent surge in Goldman Sachs’s share price since October, and the 5.1 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Goldman’s decision follows criticism of the bank by lawmakers who questioned its decision to set aside a record $11.4 billion to pay employees in the first half of the year.
The company’s warrant transaction “was the best deal for taxpayers yet,” said Linus Wilson, a finance professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Do as I say, not as I do! Obama and his signing statements.
Democrats irked by Obama signing statement
By ANNE FLAHERTY (AP) –
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has irked close allies in Congress by declaring he has the right to ignore legislation on constitutional grounds after having criticized George W. Bush for doing the same.
Four senior House Democrats on Tuesday said they were “surprised” and “chagrined” by Obama’s declaration in June that he doesn’t have to comply with provisions in a war spending bill that puts conditions on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Read the rest of this entry
Your messenger did not know that Barry had it in him!
Always knew that Nick had it in him. Hell he is French – But Barry?
Feel free to add your own caption!
They might be treading water in Auckland, but they will be eating popcorn at Machu Picchu.
It just might be good to be an Inca again, well better than it has been…
The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire. A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that “the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries.”
Your messenger wonders if the AGW movement, headed up by wealthy white fat-cats like Al Gore, is just another attempt by “the man” to keep the little brown people down…
The new study is called “Putting the Rise of the Inca within a Climatic and Land Management Context” and was prepared by Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an English paleo-biologist working for the French Institute of Andean Studies, in Lima. Alex led a team that includes Brian Bauer, of the University of Illinois, one of today’s top Inca-ologists. The study is being published in Climate of the Past, an online academic journal.
Alex spends a lot of time in Cuzco and he told me the other day that the report “raises the question of whether today’s global warming may be another opportunity for the Andes.”
Sure people like Gore and his buddies complain about the idea of Wall Street being under water; but aren’t they really worried about poor people in Peru making big money selling ethanol corn grown up-slope in the Andes? Yep, think of all of those Inca descendants driving those huge flex-fuel trucks made by Chevy and Ford from their corn profits. Go ahead Al – stop the world from warming and keep the Peruvians poor.
The author of our little story makes this observation…
Core samples from glaciers and from the mud beneath lakes in the Andes, the Amazon and elsewhere have built up a history of the world’s climate and the message is crystal clear. It is that changes have taken place in the past, during the six or seven thousand years of our agriculture-based civilizations, that are just as big as the ones we are facing from today’s CO2 warming.
Ok, Ok, Ok I follow this, except this part: “…the ones we are facing from today’s CO2 warming.” Really now? Couldn’t it just be that since our good old planet goes through these changes with regularity that this change is well – a regular one? In any event it is comforting that we survived before. I mean I guess it is.
…finally, there is the role of natural variability in changes now being observed. Nobody disputes that the climate, independent of human activities, changes. The question is to what extent changes now underway can be attributed to natural variability. “So far, in the 21st century, global warming has stabilized and no one really knows why,” writes Dr. William Cotton, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “None of the ‘known’ climate forcing mechanisms can explain the discrepancy.” We know too little about natural variability of the climate to confidently make predictions, he insists.
then just what do you know?
Get Real Baby: When Will the Realist Start Getting Real?
The New Republic
Washington Diarist by Leon Wieseltier
The Long Arc
Post Date July 15, 2009
I am not an Iran expert, unlike almost everyone I meet, but I find it hard to imagine that the young men and women suffering the blows of the Basij would not welcome our support, that they are in the streets with angry thoughts of Mossadegh. If these events have shown anything, it is that their enemy and our enemy are the same.
His little essay explains in a very simple way why Obama’s approach with Iran is wrong.
On a rainy day in 1993, I sat with my parents at the opening ceremonies of the Holocaust Museum and heard President Clinton, who was doing nothing to stop the genocide in Bosnia, suggest that the genocide in Bosnia must be stopped, because never again can we allow genocide to occur. My mother laconically whispered that “he talks about Bosnia as if he is somebody else.”
If all of us support the dissidents but the president does not, the dissidents have an American problem. If none of us support the dissidents but the president does, the dissidents do not have an American problem. And either way, the president is “meddling.” Obama’s parsimonious performance in the first weeks of the rebellion in Tehran, the disappearance of his eloquence and his championship of change, was an attempt by the president to impersonate the rest of us, to be just another saddened consumer of tweets and feeds. Hence his refrains about “bearing witness” and “the world is watching.” That is uplift for a demonstration, or a vigil. Witnessing and watching are varieties of passivity. The rest of us witness and watch, because we can do little else.
I could go on, but I guess the horse is dead. I just am amazed that any conservative on this blog could believe Obama has the right approach. I just might have enough time now – I feel a PG Rant coming on in the very near future! 
“The days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over… To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life.” Or – “Science is what we say it is. Sit down and shutup!”
No it is not a conspiracy. What we have here is a dogmatic approach.
Alan – “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”
Well I can kinda see how choosing truth and science over team hope-n-change’s dogma could rankle.
Then the nerve of this tuff stuff!
In a surprisingly well done report CBS postulated…
The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency — and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.
That deserves a resounding “YA THINK?” The CBS article needs to be read in full. It has fun little tidbits like this…
“I was told for probably the first time in I don’t know how many years exactly what I was to work on,” said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. “And it was not to work on climate change.” One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.
For its part, the EPA sent CBSNews.com an e-mailed statement saying: “Claims that this individual’s opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted.”
Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.
Didn’t somebody mention transparency?
Your humble messenger’s snippets: How climate change, historic legislation, tax loopholes, wealth transfer and million dollar green jobs are all related!
Does anyone wanna buy a pig in a poke?
June 26 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama prodded lawmakers to approve a “historic” bill to limit greenhouse-gas emissions as part of intensifying lobbying efforts for a vote in the U.S. House that could come today.
…Obama, in his public comments, called the measure “absolutely critical” to ensure a clean-energy economy that would help the U.S. “be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.” He also predicted “a close vote” on it.
June 26 (Bloomberg) — America’s biggest oil companies will probably cope with U.S. carbon legislation by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports.
“It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment,”
AXcess News – Washington – President Barack Obama vowed to close tax loopholes on foreign investments Monday, even going so far as to threaten banks with action if they didn’t cooperate in identifying American foreign investments.
The Democratic administration of President Obama will pursue American businesses and individual taxpayers who use foreign loopholes in investing abroad to avoid paying federal income taxes. The move will affect major US companies such as Caterpillar.
Washington, DC — Spain’s decade-long program to subsidize the creation and continued existence of so-called green jobs through a massive infusion of taxpayer resources “has cost many jobs,” former President Bill Clinton admitted to a Spanish audience at the European University of Madrid this week, according to the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo
No good deed goes unpunished for the Artful-Parser.
Our Equivocator-In-Chief has been bitten by the snarly dog once again…
On the diplomatic front, Ahmadinejad has demanded that Barack Obama, the US president, stop “interfering” in Iran’s affairs, the Fars news agency reported.
“I hope you [Obama] will avoid interfering in Iran’s affairs and express regret in a way that the Iranian people are informed of it,” he was quoted as saying.Bush comparison
Ahmadinejad said that Obama’s comments were similar in tone to those of this predecessor, George Bush, and could put an end to any hopes of dialogue between the two countries, which have not had diplomatic relations for 30 years.Since taking office in January, Obama has made diplomatic overtures towards Iran. but in recent comments, he said there were significant questions about the election results and that he was “appalled and outraged” by the violent suppression of the protests.
Addressing Obama, Ahmadinejad said: “Will you use this language with Iran [in any future dialogue]? If this is your stance, there will be nothing left to talk about. Do you think this behaviour will solve the problem for you? This will not have any result except that the people will consider you somebody similar to Bush.”Ahmadinejad has repeatedly accused the US, Britain and other Western nations of backing the protesters disputing the election result.
As I tried to illustrate in my post here, and in my response to the Scribe here (though I think he missed it), it is not a lack of understanding going on here. It is a question of principles.
Elections have consequences – Ours and Theirs: We now have “The Third Way”. We await theirs.
Unfortunately brutal crackdowns start like this also…
“I’m absolutely optimistic, because history has taught me that all the revolutions start like this,” she said. “Every revolution has violence and some people die, but nothing stays like this forever.”
I agree with the forever part. I do think the optimistic part is well..a bit optimistic based on this support…
“When a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car,” Obama said, “the violence clearly has reached an intolerable level.” But reports from Iran show his own statements are being “mistranslated” there and spun to suggest that the U.S. is encouraging rioters, Obama said, and he doesn’t want to give opponents anything to work with.
Rarely if ever is it a lack of understanding – it always is a matter of principle.
President Barack Obama did not “lose” Iran. This is not a Jimmy Carter moment. But the foreign-policy education of America’s 44th president has just begun. Hitherto, he had been cavalier about other lands, he had trusted in his own biography as a bridge to distant peoples, he had believed he could talk rogues and ideologues out of deeply held beliefs. His predecessor had drawn lines in the sand. He would look past them.
Thus a man who had been uneasy with his middle name (Hussein) during the presidential campaign would descend on Ankara and Cairo, inserting himself in a raging civil war over Islam itself. An Iranian theocratic regime had launched a bid for dominion in its region; Mr. Obama offered it an olive branch and waited for it to “unclench” its fist.
Mr. Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo did not reshape the Islamic landscape. I was in Saudi Arabia when Mr. Obama traveled to Riyadh and Cairo. The earth did not move, life went on as usual. There were countless people puzzled by the presumption of the entire exercise, an outsider walking into sacred matters of their faith. In Saudi Arabia, and in the Arabic commentaries of other lands, there was unease that so complicated an ideological and cultural terrain could be approached with such ease and haste.
Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obamahad spoken of his desire to restore to America’s relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30thanniversary of the Iranian Revolution — and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.
Sometimes being glib has limited utility.
Even Hugo understands the irony behind “Comrade” Obama’s actions.
From my favorite news source - TV New Zealand. The news from Kiwiland.
Chavez: “Comrade” Obama more left wing
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than US President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp.
During one of Chavez’s customary lectures on the curse of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM’s bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the US government a 60% stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might.
“Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right,” Chavez joked on a live television broadcast.
Read the rest of this entry
Another poor misguided soul…
Barack Obama should stop apologising for America
It is time for President Obama to recognise that his strategy is weakening his country and making the United States more vulnerable to attack, says Nile Gardiner.
“No leader in American history has gone to greater lengths than Barack Obama to make amends for his own country. From condemnation of American “arrogance” in a speech in Strasbourg to acknowledging U.S. “mistakes” before millions of Muslims on Arab television, Obama has rarely missed an opportunity to apologise for the actions of the American people.
President Obama has elevated the art of national self-loathing to new heights, and seems to delight in prostrating the most powerful nation on the face of the earth before its critics and rivals, especially on foreign soil.”
Man where is this guy’s proof? The nerve of this dude…
“Obama’s supine approach has become a humiliating spectacle for a country that, together with Great Britain, has done more to advance the cause of liberty and freedom across the world than any nation in the world. Every groveling apology by the president undermines America’s confidence, standing and power, and strengthens the hand of those who seek her destruction.
It is time for President Obama to recognise that his new strategy is weakening his country and making the United States more vulnerable to attack. The dream of America haters who revel in the vision of the humbling of a superpower, is being realised by an administration that has so far fundamentally rejected the idea of American exceptionalism.”
CHEERS
For Jeff…
Came across this at Maggie’s Farm. It made me think of you.
If I read the lyrics to some of my favourite songs, they don’t mean shit to me. But if I hear ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, it is so powerful and emotional. All I want out of any of these songs is the right emotion. I don’t give a shit what the lyrics are. Dylan rambled on way too much for my liking. I remember years ago saying to him: ‘listen to ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’; I like this more than any of the songs we’re playing. This is emotional to me; our songs are clever. I don’t care for clever. Let’s try and get somewhere that has an emotional thing.
- Robbie Robertson
Don’t blame your messenger – Sotomayor said it!
“All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is — Court of Appeals is where policy is made,” she said. “And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don’t ‘make law,’ I know. [Laughter from audience] Okay, I know. I know. I’m not promoting it, and I’m not advocating it. I’m, you know. [More laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its interpretation, its application.”
At Berkeley…
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”
Still, Judge Sotomayor questioned whether achieving impartiality “is possible in all, or even, in most, cases.” She added, “And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”
She also approvingly quoted several law professors who said that “to judge is an exercise of power” and that “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.”
Dancing with the devil
David Goldman, the man formerly known as Spengler, illustrates that actions have consequences…
This is just grand. First the Obama administration pulls the rug out from under the insurance industry by playing politics with credit seniority in the Chrysler bankruptcy, adding to the uncertainty of valuing trillions of dollars of corporate and commercial real estate debt. It then offers a bailout to the investors.
It’s not just Chrysler, of course: it’s the fact of loan modification that skims money for the servicers and starves the subprime pools, it’s the threat of cramdown in mortgages, it’s an administration that is applying banana republic finance techniques. There is a reason that subprime home equity AAA’s are trading at 27 cents on the dollar — that’s what you would get if you have 100% defaults and a 27% recovery rate. It’s practically impossible for things to get that bad, so there must be another explanation. And there is: the threat of government programs pushing recovery into the distant future and diverting cash flows away from bondholders makes this asset class extremely uncertain.
I mentioned to Phooey in a comment a few days ago that line from 8mm “If you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change. The devil changes you.” What is worrisome to me is that Obama knows why these laws and customs where in place. The explanation is that he has bigger plans.
What An Asinine Comment
Your messenger thinks those little brown people should have known better.
“The situation should have never gotten to that point,” he said. “If you don’t enforce the laws steadily, then when you suddenly enforce them, there is more collateral damage.”
Good old Roy Beck and NumbersUSA - what would America do without your nativist actions on her behalf? Its always good to be supported by a pro-abortion eugenicist like John Tanton isn’t it? My-o-my it must be rewarding to think you worked for the removal of those identity thieves and helped clean up Northeastern Iowa.
Since federal helicopters raced over cornfields on May 12, 2008, en route to arresting 389 illegal workers at a sprawling kosher meatpacking plant, what was a center of commerce in northeastern Iowa teeters toward collapse as the plant sputters in bankruptcy, its managers face prison time and the town fights to stay solvent.
Since the landmark raid, an economic squeeze has destroyed several businesses. Postville’s population has shrunk by nearly half, to about 1,800 residents, and townsfolk say the resulting anxiety — felt from the deli to the schoolyard — has been relentless. Read the rest of this entry
Jon Stewart apologizes about Truman remark.
I didn’t make much of Stewart’s original comment stating Truman was a war criminal. I have long known that feeling was out there. I considered his remark as just red meat.
His apology is a little more interesting. In fact it is vastly more interesting. I present it here because it has not made the rounds like the accusation did.
There is a word for the position Stewart takes.
UPDATE: Big Hollywood has a peice on this that explains Jon Stewart’s hypocracy very well. It’s worth a look. Jon Stewart Courageously Defends His Bottom Flank by Eric Golub
We have a basketball team now in Denver. They are even good.
Its been quite awhile but thanks to Chauncey Billups, who played schoolboy ball right down the street from where I am typing this, the Denver Nuggets have returned. They have not just been winning, they have been demoralizing teams. Dallas gave up in the forth last night. Hey, I am even starting to dig on their tats.
I am just your humble messenger.
Some climate and carbon news from our English speaking brethen!
Britain’s only wind turbine plant to close
The UK’s only wind turbine manufacturing plant is to close, dealing a humiliating blow to the government’s promise to support low-carbon industries.
Vestas, the world’s biggest wind energy group, said today that it would close its Isle of Wight facility, which employs about 700 people and makes blades for wind farms in the US.
The group had planned to convert the factory in Newport so it could make blades for the British market, but said this morning that the paralysis gripping the industry meant that orders had ground to a halt. Such low demand could not justify the investment, Ditlev Engel, the chief executive, told the Guardian.
Not in my back yard you nimby S.O.B.
Engel said the weakness of the pound had also had an effect, making it more expensive to build wind farms in the UK, but the major problem lay in planning application.
“It is extremely time consuming and extremely complicated. Some of our developers, customers, will tell you it is so difficult. In the UK nimbyism is a huge challenge. This is outside of Whitehall territory.
“People talk about big offshore parks. Why not put in onshore parks? The cost of installation is half compared to offshore.”
This a real drag (I know – I’m sorry) because these technologies are needed to pull us out of our recession/depression/BDS.
Bureau blows hot and cold over Antarctica warm-up as Bureau of Metereology backs down from a claim that temperatures at Australia’s three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades
Well with only two choices you can get confused…
“You were told explicitly that the data collected by the Bureau of Metereology at the Australian bases shows a warming for maximum temperatures at all bases, and minimum temperatures at all but Mawson.”
However, Professor Turner told The Weekend Australian the data showed a cooling of the East Antarctica coast associated with the onset of the ozone layer from 1980 onwards. Professor Turner said the monthly mean temperatures for Casey station from 1980 to 2005 showed a cooling of 0.45C per decade. In autumn, the temperature trend has been a cooling of 0.93C per decade.
“These fairly small temperature trends seem to be consistent to me with the small increase in sea ice extent off the coast,” he said.
Dr Watkins did not dispute the figures referred to by Professor Turner.
Your messenger just reports folks.
NZ glacier findings upset climate theory.
Not to be out done the Kiwis get in on the act…
Glaciers are sensitive indicators of climate changes, usually advancing when it cools and retreating when it warms.
The first direct confirmation of differences in glacier behaviour between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the new work topples theories based on climate in the Northern Hemisphere changing in tandem with the climate in the Southern Hemisphere.The research argues that at times the climate in both hemispheres evolved in sync and at other times it evolved differently in different parts of the world.
Dr Barrell said their research presented “new data of novel high precision”, though the team has so far chosen not to roll out wider interpretations too quickly.
Just something to warm your heart.
Williams family OK’s Moreno’s request No. 27 is back in circulation in Denver.
By Bill Williamson
ESPN.com
The number was put on hiatus as a tribute to slain cornerback Darrent Williams. The popular Williams, who was 24 at the time of his death, was shot and killed in downtown Denver on Jan. 1, 2007, hours after the team’s season ended.
After not being used the past two seasons, the number will be worn by Denver rookie running back Knowshon Moreno.
The Broncos picked Moreno, out of Georgia, with the 12th choice in last weekend’s draft. He is expected to be the starting running back for an offense that may become more run-oriented in the wake of the Jay Cutler trade to Chicago.
Moreno, who wore No. 24 in college (currently worn by All-Pro cornerback Champ Bailey in Denver), asked the Broncos to wear No. 27. The Broncos then called Williams’ mother, Rosalind Williams, to ask permission to use the number.
The Williams family called the Broncos back and gave its blessing for Moreno to wear the number — on one condition. Read the rest of this entry
I miss Andre!
Andre where in the hell did you go? I really miss you. We have Wes and he tries, but it is just him. We have the troll de jour. They never last long. Take Phooey for instance – he just mocks, insults, farts and leaves. It’s all just too silly. I miss Dre who was witty to a purpose and snarky with a point! Besides none of them can accessorize! Please come back!
Dude she played the Reagan card!
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”
Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican, Maine
She and Ronald are right.
So what is the point?
Your humble messenger’s quote of the day.
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
G. K. Chesterton 1924
The American Conservative Movement: Back to its anti-populist roots.
Quite a bit of bandwith on this site, and throughout America, has been devoted lately to populist rhetoric. We have strapped the evil big business men and the trade unionists. We cane the vile illegal immigrants and bemoan the fictional job losses to overseas. We champion protectionism as a foreign policy instrument. The hell with trading with China! We confuse nationalism with patriotism. We then keep quoting the little rich kid WFB Jr., and the uplifting Reagan who believed in none this crap, instead of quoting Pat Buchanan who does. We justify it because these are supposed conservative values. Well no not really, they aren’t. They just are not conservative principles.
Well I should say this is not my father’s conservative movement anymore. It is not his Republican party anymore either. At the top with McCain and Palin we have two opportunists screaming populist platitudes at the top of their lungs and prescribing statist/socialist solutions to any and all problems. Then we have the dissatisfied ‘social conservatives’ who are angry that their views did not carry the day even though they demanded it. They scream they are Regan’s heirs. These ‘true conservatives’ are delighted with Palin though besides her being admirably pro-life there seems to be very little politically conservative about her. Read the rest of this entry
No, this is what they intended. Or “What they want to do is show they deserve this good deal from the government by helping out the average man.”
UPDATE: Massive Effort to Save Mortgages
John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, called it “a gutsy move on their part,” adding : “They are bending over backward to try to reach out to these people.” The coalition represents 600 community groups and has urged the government and industry to help homeowners.
It is worth noting that JP Morgan took on these loans voluntarily when it acquired failing banks. Since it took the good with the bad at the governments urging some help makes sense.
In a recent post Dave the Sage asked ‘Is this what they intended?’. He mused…
So much for helping the little guy and easing the credit crunch. What an embarrassment the bailout turned out to be.
In Dave’s populist rhetoric I assume the little guy means homeowners who are suffering due to the latest crisis. Dave quoted a NYT columnist of all people who said he heard this in a recent conference call…
“I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way,” the executive said. He added that the money could also be used as a backstop in case “recession turns into depression or what happens in the future.”
There was not a word about lending — not to businesses or home buyers or car buyers or students or other consumers. Just the opposite. In response to another question, the executive said that the bank expected to continue to tighten credit.
Well I think he should he kept listening. I have kept reading, and look what I read…
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. bank by market value, said it won’t begin new foreclosureproceedings on some loans while it finds ways to make payments easier on $110 billion of problem mortgages. Within the next 90 days, the bank, which two weeks ago accepted a $25 billion cash infusion from the government, will examine loans and may agree to reduce interest rates or principal amounts, New York-based JPMorgan said today in a statement.
Congress has been urging financial-services companies to work with borrowers and avoid foreclosures, which rose to the highest on record in the third quarter. Bank of America Corp. said it will help more than 630,000 at-risk borrowers stay in their homes.
‘The bells of Christ Church ringing peals of rejoicing for an infidel president!’ Or there has to be a bastard hiding somewhere!
A wise person once said (me not E) that ‘Bipartisanship was a land located between Oz and Neverland’. Boy was I right! Some of my fellow country men and women, and some fellow Conclub members, somehow believe that at sometime, somewhere politicians conducted themselves in a civil manner. That they offered in a genuine way to reach out and discuss only the ‘issues’. I guess maybe somewhere over the rainbow it happened once possibly. I challenge them to find a single case where that happened here in the real world.
Imagine that in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, President George W. Bush was directing the government to arrest, convict, and imprison his critics. Imagine that John Kerry was paying a scandalmonger to dig up dirt on Tom DeLay. Imagine further that John McCain was working secretly against Bush’s re-election, that DeLay was plotting to replace Bush with Dick Cheney as president, and that John Edwards was conspiring to be elected president instead of Kerry.
Unimaginable, surely. But 204 years earlier in the presidential election of 1800, that’s roughly what took place. The perpetrators were the statesmen who now are virtually deified as the Founding Fathers. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and just about everyone else on the political scene were performing in a dastardly manner that Bush, Kerry, Cheney et al. would never have contemplated two centuries later.
Do not feel like you were being singled out…
My wife and I are going to be spending a rare day out today. Even dinner at a decent restaurant. It usually hard to do things like this. My health interferes quite a bit. Today is special though. We have been married twenty three years.
So I am going to spend the day with somebody who I have kept pissed off for over twenty three years.
I seemed to have pulled on every body’s chain recently except the Beast, and he has been gone. So do not feel alone, just pray for my wife.
Sorry E, Dave and Wes.
Well he would have, if he could have.
Declared Biden: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
What’s wrong with that, some might ask?
Well, for starters Republican Herbert Hoover was president when the stock market crashed in October 1929. Second, Roosevelt didn’t take office until four years later. And, not to be picky, but there were also no televisions in use at the time. Radio was Roosevelt’s favored medium.
Your messenger’s quotes of the day…
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
From a NYT article entitled New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, dated 9/11/2003. Oh by the way the new agency was proposed by the Bush administration and opposed by the Democrats. Barney and Mel are some of the guys involved in ‘fixing’ things. Be afraid, be very afraid.
The sellouts, the confused and the stupid – or eyes wide open.
UPDATE: I wrote this post last week. I considered not running it as some might not appreciate the criticism. Well no comments so far. LOL. This London Times writer stole my stuff! BUT HEY, we are always ahead of the curve here.
McCain’s attack on Wall Street “greed and corruption” and call for greater regulation in response to last week’s financial crisis has added to concerns about the tenor of his campaign. A Wall Street Journal editorial warned that he would “never beat Obama by running as an angry populist like Al Gore, circa 2000”.
John McCain is of course no conservative. He has a decent record on life and he had the best geopolitical approach among the Republican candidates. I chose him because of his stance on Iraq and the political courage that showed. I am not a rabid sufferer of nativism and was not troubled by his stance on immigration. He had quite a bit of baggage in other areas, but on balance he was worth the gamble I thought.
The brand of statism he has been promoting lately has my gorge rising. He willingness to promote some kind of amorphous ‘service’ money hole with no clear direction at the forum last week was pathetic. He at times seems to be willing to out ‘collectivist’ his socialist opponent. One could, if sufficiently Kool-aid enabled, chalk this up to giving a sympathetic face to his campaign. He is the ‘reform’ candidate. OK if you say so.
His new populist rhetoric is extremely troubling. His blaming the evil oil, banking, insurance, investment industries is a bit too rich. He proposes non-specific regulatory reforms on an over taxed and over regulated economy. Obama demonizing business and industry is usual collectivist’s stock-in-trade. When McCain scapegoats business, and the people that run them, he is participating in the same class warfare that the Democrats participate in. He is selling out.
The current mortgage loan crisis – ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave!’ Or ain’t socialism grand?
My friend Andre asked me a simple question. Of course I am not capable of a simple answer.
“The reason for this crisis is due to the government altering how the mortgage markets worked.”
I’m curious, PG, how the government is responsible for this. Is it somehow the fault of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which for a long time have been private enterpises)? I tend to think that deregulation and the overabundance of loans that should never have been made through other private companies played for more of a role in this than Uncle Sam (other than his looking the other way for the last twelve or so years).
Andre, I was not specifically addressing the MACs in the quote of mine you pulled. The MACs are privately owned, but could issue securities backed by the government. They also were exempt from quite a few regulations. They are not private in any real sense of the world.
The foundation of my point in the statement you quoted was that the politicians, for their own reasons, decided it should be extremely easy to borrow money to own a home. Everyone should have the American dream. (Just like Obama will try to make higher education, and health care, free for everyone.)
They relaxed the lending requirements. They outlawed ‘redlining’, and other types of what they considered ‘discriminatory’ lending practices. In the end government, and privately, backed securities were covering loans with virtually no underwriting.
That is not the free market at work. No bank in their right mind would loan money with a contract consisting of: Stated Income, 100% To Value, and negative 1%, unless they government would back it. The government created that market through policy decisions. Hell, would you make those loans? (If one did not make enough of what once were considered questionable loans, then one risked losing Auto VA Approval and FHA and…)
You know those Hillary voters will vote for Obama in the end!
Sorry Obama, running your mouth doesnt count as executive experience.
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