Category Archives: Economy

Economy, Politics

Today’s Progressives, Pop Quiz

In a way to better understand why we are where we are (going down the tubes) in America today, you need to understand the mindset and philosophy of the people leading the charge. President Obama wasn’t the first “leader” to call for fundamental change.

Here’s a quick quiz.  Below are nine quotes, two each from Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and one bonus quote where you name who said it. Hint, the bonus quote belongs to none of the above.

Which quote belongs to who?

  1. “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
  2. “It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.”
  3. “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
  4. “We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?”
  5. “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
  6. “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution…”
  7. “We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
  8. “I also believe that every new handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry…”
  9. A prospective K-12 teacher needs to ‘be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and…be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.”

Answers: (1,2) Vladimir Lenin, (3,4) Joseph Stalin, (5,6) Barack Obama, (7,8) Hillary Clinton, and the bonus quote (9) belongs to William Ayers.

For more quotes from the fab four, follow the In Their Own Words link below.

Links: In Their Own Words: Lenin, Stalin, Obama, and Hillary | Bill Ayers To Teachers, It’s A ‘Movement’

China, Economy, Media, Organized Labor, Politics

Pollution from China Reaches U.S., Our Fault?

One of the best kept secrets from the global warming crowd and the so-called environmentalist movement is that the great majority of pollution going into the atmosphere comes from China and India, not the United States.

But now that pollution from China is blowing across the Western United States, the meme changes to it’s our fault because we buy too much stuff. Not only that, but the pollution we’re getting is because of what China exports to the U.S., as if  pollution generated from what they export to other countries around the world what, goes no where, or goes somewhere else?

China’s contribution to pollution is the result of the process of their manufacturing and electrical generation, not from the products we buy. That “process” being they don’t give a flip about using clean technology as is used in the United States. 

Two facts, it is the political, labor, and tax policies in the U.S. that have driven the manufacturing and related jobs overseas. And, although the U.S. is the cleanest industrial nation for its size in the world, no amount of industry strangulation here is going to make up for countries like India and China who have no desire to clean up their act.

Here are a couple other fun facts:

• China emits more CO2 than the US and Canada put together – up by 171% since the year 2000
• The US has had declining CO2 for two years running, the last time the US had declining CO2 for 3 years running was in the 1980s

Links: Pollution from China Reaches U.S., According to New Study – weather.com. | World carbon dioxide emissions data by country: China speeds ahead of the rest

Economy, Florida, MRIOTD, Pensacola, Politics

Perdido Beach Mouse v2.0, MRIOTD Award Winner

1 Comment

Never ceases to amaze the hubris of some who assume the role of our Maker. Some command to lower sea level and adjust the world’s thermostat, others, like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, refuse to take NO for an answer where rodents are concerned.perdido_beach_mouse1

The Perdido Key beach mouse, was wiped out naturally and was “re-introduced” in 1987. And again, it was wiped out naturally by hurricane Ivan. Not to be outdone by mother nature, the mouse has been captive bred since then. And people who are supposed to be environmentalists are about to infest the environment, Perdido Key, with a rodent that has twice proven it can not sustain itself, its survival rate is zero, in an environment where people have a survival rate of 100 percent.

And this makes sense to who? For this reason the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wins the Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day award.

Economy, Immigration, Politics, Race Relations

Open Letter To President Obama

President Barack Obama holds a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Jan. 14, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama holds a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Jan. 14, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Below is a rant-turned-letter that was prompted by a Facebook post from Barack Obama’s OFA that started like this:

We have an opportunity to fix America’s broken immigration system, grow our economy, and give undocumented youth and their families the chance to earn their citizenship.

endofstory

Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States

Here’s a clue Barack ol buddy. You’ve had the opportunity to do something to grow our economy via private sector jobs, not by growing government with handouts and dependency programs, for 5 years now. And there’s nothing wrong with the immigration laws we already have. What’s wrong is you won’t enforce them.

You continue to amaze me with your criticism of all that is wrong in our country. Everything you are responsible for; high unemployment (U-6 at 13%), lowest worker participation rate since the Carter era, falling family incomes, and all the above hurting Blacks more than any other demographic, as if you are a bystander. The conditions you criticize are valid. But you are the one responsible for all of it. You and your policies are the problem.

Have you ever been accused of being one of those “enemies from within?” As in “foreign and domestic?” You sir, are one of the domestic ones. You make that real clear by the way you make your own laws, and break your own laws, and rule, like a dictator, to get around Congress. As if there is only one branch of government now. And, you use the power of government, the DOJ, IRS, and Treasury, to target your political enemies.

And especially your hissy fit today at your Cabinet meeting when you threatened to rule by executive order. Fidelity to the Constitution doesn’t mean to circumvent it. You, of all people, should know. I’m told you were a Constitutional Professor, as if that’s supposed to mean something. That doesn’t give you the authority to ignore it. You hate our Constitution and refuse to protect and defend it. Your oath didn’t mean to make sure the Smithsonian Institute doesn’t burn down (where the Constitution is archived). That’s not the kind of protecting and defending your oath means. I’m sure you would feel more at home in Venezuela, Cuba, or Egypt, running the streets with the Muslim Brotherhood. Sucks to be you for being responsible for a country you despise.

So I ask you Mr. President, former Constitutional professor, what’s next when a domestic enemy is identified?

Looking forward to hearing from you (not the Secret Service, IRS, DOJ, or Treasury) soon.

Putting America and Americans first,

Ross Calloway

Pensacola FL

{for quality assurance, this post may be recorded by the NSA}

China, Economy, Iran, Obamacare, Politics, War On Terror

President Obama, Managing America’s Decline

In a matter of two months, Josef Joffe’s book ‘The Myth of America’s Decline’ has a become its own myth as China surpasses the US as the world’s china-exportslargest trading nation.

China became the world’s largest trading nation in 2013, overtaking the US in what Beijing described as “a landmark milestone” for the country. China’s annual trade in goods passed the $4tn (£2.4tn) mark for the first time last year according to official data, after exports from the world’s second largest economy rose 7.9% to $2.21tn and imports rose 7.3% to $1.95tn.

As a result total trade rose 7.6% over the year to $4.16tn. The US is yet to publish its 2013 trade figures, but with trade totalling $3.5tn in the first 11 months of the year, it is unlikely to beat China.

The shift in the trading pecking order reflected China’s rising global dominance, despite a slowdown in economic growth last year.

There are 92 million Americans without a job who don’t need to be convinced that Obama’s economy is a disaster. And 15 million Americans who have lost their health insurance policies don’t need to be told that the nation’s health security is a disaster. Worse than it was before Obamacare. And our allies around the world already know that we are an unreliable ally, too eager to subjugate our own interests, and theirs, for some naive world view that if we will be nice to our enemies that they will be nice in return. Iran and al-Qaida just love President Obama. And they and the rest of the world just laughs at him.

Mr. Joffe’s book has all the ingredients of being right, except for the assumption that America has a President and congress intent on keeping  America strong. Starting with his apology tour, our president acts like he is embarrassed by our number one ranking in military and economic strength, and sees projecting that strength for the benefit of ourselves and our allies as being an obnoxious bully. He has set out to “right those wrongs” and is succeeding, to our detriment and that of future generations of Americans.

Link: China surpasses US as world’s largest trading nation

Economy, Politics

Unemployment Rate Drops To 6.7% AND Increases To 13%

The Lunch Counter has documented over and over how the unemployment numbers are phony, in that they don’t mean that more people are working as that percentage goes down. The Left and its compliant media don’t know, or won’t tell you, that the reason the percent of unemployment is dropping is not because more people are working but because more people gave up looking for work (in Obama’s depressed economy) than found jobs. The labor force participation fell 347,000 from Nov 2013 to Dec 2013. When the unemployment rate declines, we want to see both employment and participation increase as discouraged workers return to the labor force. Today, we got the former, but not the latter.

The civilian labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 62.8 percent in December, offsetting a change of the same magnitude in November. In December, the employment- population ratio was unchanged at 58.6 percent. The labor force participation rate declined by 0.8 percentage point over the year, while the employment-population ratio was unchanged. (See table A-1.)

It will be interesting to see how the Administration spins the drop in unemployment rate and the jobless recovery. What do I mean by “jobless recovery” when 74,000 jobs were created in December 2013? When you consider that about 250,000 jobs need to be created each month just to break even with population growth and retirement turnover, we’re going in the wrong direction, and have been for years.

Next time you hear someone tout the good unemployment numbers, ask them how the unemployment percent goes down when fewer people are working than at any time since the Jimmy Carter era. In terms of jobs and employment, President Obama is Jimmy Carter’s second term.

The BLS keeps track of total, as in real, unemployment which they call the U-6. This number includes people they quit counting that causes the published unemployment “rate” to go down. That’s the figure The White House shamelessly champions to say how the recovery is real yet “not as good as we’d like.” The U-6 unemployment percentage is 13%. (see table A-15)

Link: Bureau Of Labor Statistics Employment Situation for December 2013.

Economy, Media, Politics

Progressives’ Road To Serfdom

If you’re out to transform the country as we know it, you must do two things.  First, you need a distraction. You have to keep distracting people by going from one crisis to the next, drawing your focus to the crisis, instead of what’s really going on. And with the mainstream media all wrapped up in the soap opera meme of politics, you can bet that they will bring each one to you. The media of today is not the watchdog they once were. The ‘watchdog’ has been replaced by a lap dog. They follow the administrations’s (Valerie Jarrett’s) script.

The other thing you have to do is take what is right and make it wrong. Up is down, left is right, and good is bad. And when you just don’t like America as it is and was founded, before you can slide into socialism and the fascist economic model, you first have to erase 200 years of free-market capitalism from America’s collective memory.

A fascinating editorial in Forbes by Harry Binswanger, shows us how President Obama attempts to make capitalism bad, and collectivism good. Basically by lying about both. First of all, because of government intervention in just about every industry that creates economic activity, i.e.. prosperity, there is very little room left for a free-market to be free. There are proper regulations, and there are oppressive and unnecessary regulations. It is the latter that tampers with free markets, creating anomalies to how they would otherwise behave. And this is the example that Obama uses to make capitalism wrong and socialism right.

In a speech in Kansas, calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, President Obama has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.

Continue reading Progressives’ Road To Serfdom →

Economy, Obamacare, Politics, Race Relations

Trickle Down Poverty, The Grand Deflection

I don’t know what neighborhood Mrs. Eleanor Johnson lives in, talking about all this booming economy that Republicans are “deflecting” by talking about what a disaster Obamacare is, because the U.S. Department of Commerce says something completely different about the economy we live in.

“The typical American family’s income has fallen every year since 2007, the year the Great Recession began, for a cumulative decline of 8.3 percent. Median income is also down 9 percent from its record high of $56,080, set two recessions ago in 1999.”

The median income is $56,080. That means that there are incomes higher, and some lower. Lumped together, it comes to 56k. In the economy that Barack Obama has run, not only have incomes fallen, but his economy has hurt Black Americans harder than any other racial demographic.

“The median income for black households was $33,321 last year, less than half the median income for Asian households, who had the highest median family income at $68,636. The current federal poverty threshold for a family of four is $23,550.”

President Barack Obama can tout “progress” in the economy all he wants. Are you feeling it?

I’ll tell you where the deflection is occurring. It’s the Democrat line that Republicans want poor people to vote against their best interest. Ostensibly meaning that economic principles espoused by Republicans would be harmful to the poor, and Blacks. And worse, that Republican’s don’t care about the poor, or Blacks. You know, it’s the race card, class and wealth envy that Democrats habitually use to divides this country. Especially around election time. And it is a very effective tactic. Must be when you consider that over 90% of African Americans continue to support the man responsible for the obstacles we all face. Trickle down poverty.

endofstory

Because the Pensacola News Journal doesn’t always keep links to articles, and for full context of the above, below is her letter as appeared in the Pensacola News Journal January, 6, 2014.

GOP deflection

In this new year, Republicans have to keep hammering Obamacare so people won’t notice the following facts:

1) Corporate profits are soaring; the stock market has hit record highs.

2) The U.S. now produces as much oil as it imports.

3) General Motors has reported three consecutive years of profitability with 2012 net earnings of $4.9 billion; Ford’s predicting 2014 its best year ever.

4) The job and housing markets are steadily improving.

5) Iraq is allowing U.N. inspections of its nuclear program.

But hey, let’s keep focused on Obamacare so people will vote in Republicans so they can reverse all the above, limit the vote, involve us in more foreign wars, cut taxes for the rich, and plunge us back where we were when Republican Bush left office – teetering on the brink of a depression.

– Eleanor Johnson

Pensacola Beach

Link: GOP deflection

I had a point-by-point response to that too!

Continue reading Trickle Down Poverty, The Grand Deflection →

Economy, Media, Pensacola, Politics

Commercial Progressive Talk-Radio Takes A Dive

Following the same footsteps as Air America Radio a few years ago, commercial Progressive or Liberal (same thing) talk radio disappears in markets replete with their disciples, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Well, except for NPR that, so far, taxpayers are forced to subsidize.

2014 will mark the beginning of a massive change for liberal talk radio across the country. In New York, WWRL 1600 AM will flip to Spanish-language music and talk, throwing Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, and Alan Colmes off the air. In Los Angeles, KTLK 1150 will be dumping Stephanie Miller, Rhodes, Bill Press and David Cruz off the air in favor of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. In San Francisco, KNEW 960 will leave Miller, Hartmann, and Mike Malloy without a radio home in the market.

hand-tapping-morse-code-on-an-antique-telegraph-machineWith listener participation down to friends, relatives, and employees, they are moving to the free, as in no commercial sponsorship required, media on the internet (short wave & smoke signals) like the wildly popular (somewhere behind Al Sharpton) Pensacola-based Ring of Fire radio show. The progressive show run by lawyers Mike Papantonio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who recently disabled reader comments from their website, and bans conservatives from commenting on their Facebook page. And, they don’t take phone calls on the fly either. They can’t. If they did, they’d be forced into defending their indefensible talking points.

This kind of ‘protecting the bubble’ censorship is not exclusive to the Ring of Fire show. It is indicative about why they can’t hold a broad audience. Except for their lemmings that do listen, their angry and derogatory tone does not attract sponsors or a broad spectrum of listeners. Mike Malloy, in the show that bears his name, is a prime example. Unlike Papantonio, Malloy will take calls. But he didn’t like one he got from me over a subject that we will be talking about again soon. Extending unemployment benefits. Malloy didn’t want to hear that Republicans wanted to extend unemployment benefits if Congress would cut an equal amount from somewhere else in the budget, like the PayGo law required. Instead, he suggested that “right-wingers” practice self mutilation instead of calling his show. See Liberals And Speech, Part 3, Right-Wingers, Cut Your Hand Off for details and the full audio.

Seems Malloy was prophetic 25 seconds into this clip, “let’s see if he calls this program if we’re still on the air.”

Link: Liberal Commercial Talk Radio Disappears in NY, LA, SF in 2014

Economy, Media, Politics

Obama’s Pay Raise For Military

You’ll have to look far and wide for a media report that explains the details behind the one percent pay raise that Obama gave to the military in the budget he signed today.

What  happened was, the House passed its version of the fiscal 2014 Defense authorization bill in June, which included a 1.8 percent pay increase for troops. The formula for determining service members’ annual pay increase is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Cost Index and the growth in private-sector wages; for 2014, that turns out to be 1.8 percent. But under the law (Title 37, Chapter 19, Section 1009) the president has the authority to set an alternate pay raise for military personnel, citing a national emergency or fiscal concerns, if Congress doesn’t pass legislation adjusting the amount or canceling it.

So one would think, what with food stamps going to active military personnel and families having shot up 400 percent, that the Commander In Chief wouldn’t be cutting the modest 1.8 percent. But he did.

All the major media outlets use this template:

  • ABC: The comprehensive defense bill Obama signed will give military personnel a 1 percent pay raise.
  •    AP: The comprehensive defense bill Obama signed will give military personnel a 1 percent pay raise.
  • USA Today: Military personnel receive a 1% raise under the bill.

Now if there were a Republican in The White House, first of all, there wouldn’t be a cut. At the very least, the military would have gotten the 1.8 percent increase based on the standard formula. But for argument’s sake, play along. If there were a Republican in the White House that did what Obama just did, the media would be screaming at the top of their lungs, front page above the fold, ‘President cuts military pay 80 percent,” and “President slashes military pay by 80 percent.”

This is a first. The media is actually calling an increase, an increase. After all, one percent is one percent more than zero. In all other circumstances where the Republican party can be demonized, that one percent increase is called a cut. A cut from the 1.8 percent increase that the House passed.

Yet another blatant example of the media covering for their president. At the expense of our troops no less.

Link: 2014 Military Pay Raise Guaranteed