Media, Politics

It's Simple, Not This Way

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CNN is in mourning. Chris Matthews is puzzled why Brown won when he campaigned on being the 41st vote against Obamacare. But it’s real simple. The people of Massachusetts, like the majority of Americans, don’t like Obama’s version of health care reform. It’s not that they don’t want health care reform.

They know how expensive their own state health care system is. They know Obamacare will be worse. Brown didn’t run on no health care reform, he ran on stopping Obama’s version. He ran on stopping the secrecy, the payoffs, and the takeovers.

Obama got a lot of support from Independents in his run for The White House. The people in Massachusetts have had a chance to see how Obama has governed with arrogance, and now realize that that’s not what they voted for. This time, they’re voting for change once again. You could call it buyer’s remorse.

Question now is, will Obama have the audacity and the arrogance to stay on the same path, or will he, like Bill Clinton, do his best to do the people’s business, instead of that of his ideological far-left base?

Now, anyone can answer the question that was asked in January and February. Will Obama and Democrats overreach? The people in Massachusetts answered that with a resounding YES.

link: In epic upset, GOP’s Brown wins Mass. Senate race

Economy

Why Economic Recovery Is About Taxes

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Had a liberal encounter of the tax kind the other day. Addressing the Left’s refusal (or possibly inability) to understand why increasing taxes are not the way to go if you want to stimulate economic activity. It started over a proponent of the administration’s taxing those financial institutions that had paid back the ‘bailout’ money that they were given.

In the liberal mindset, if you oppose that, then you’re in the pocket of Wall St.. Forgetting for a moment the Robin Hood aspect of the tax, and the unequal application of the tax, I answered that logic with a short quiz. The guy’s, or girl’s, name was Anonymous.

Anon. Below are some multiple choice questions to consider.

Income is generated by:

1. Private enterprise

2. Government

Along the same line. The money that government gets via taxes comes from:

1. Private enterprise

2. Government

When government takes money out of the private sector via taxes, what effect does it have?

1. Takes money from their business.

2. Puts money into their business.

The economy is boosted when:

1. The government takes money out of the economy via taxes and spends it as it sees fit.

2. The government leaves as much money as possible in the private sector to be used by the private sector to spend as it sees fit.

Money generated by businesses belongs to:

1. The business owners and investors.

2. The government.

And one TRUE/FALSE:

Capitalism pays for Socialism: T/F

Depending on how you answer these questions should explain why it is always taxes, taxes, taxes that effect, either negatively or positively, economic activity, AND whether the form of economic system you prefer is free-market capitalism or some form of socialist/fascist amalgamation.

If you prefer the latter, then there is this thing called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that must first be abolished.

Politics

When Teleprompters Get Heckled

It is with just a little satisfaction to see liberals getting some of their own medicine, if I may use that metaphor. One thing is obvious, teleprompters don’t react to hecklers very well.


And while we’re on the subject of Sunday’s plan to rescue Coakley’s senate campaign, it appears that Patrick Kennedy may have spent too much time at the bar. They are still running on blaming Bush. Doesn’t know Coakley’s first name, and are intent on pointing fingers. What?

Check these quotes:

“If you think there’s magic out there and things can be turned around overnight, then you would vote for someone who could promise you that, like Scott Brown,” Kennedy said. “If you don’t, if you know that it takes eight years for George Bush and his cronies to put our country into this hole … then you know we have a lot of digging to do, but some work needs to be done and this president’s in the process of doing it and we need to get Marcia Coakley to help him to do that.”

Right. Just keep on digging.

“One thing the Democrats have done wrong? We haven’t kept the focus on this disaster on the Republicans who brought it upon us. We’ve tried too hard to do that right thing, and that’s to fix it, as opposed to spend more of our time and energy pointing the finger at who got us [here] in the first place.”

(Curiously, Kennedy mentioned Coakley repeatedly during his remarks to reporters, each time referring to her as “Marcia,” not “Martha.”)

Priceless.

h/t Black & Right

Race Relations

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On November 2, 1983, Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the bill in the White House Rose Garden making the Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a national holiday. The bill first came up for a vote in 1979, but the Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives refused to pass the legislation. The first national celebration of the holiday in honor of Dr. King took place on January 20, 1986 and is celebrated on the 3rd Monday in January. In his remarks on signing the bill Reagan said: “Dr. King had awakened something strong and true, a sense that true

justice must be colorblind, and that among white and black Americans, as he put it, ‘Their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom; we cannot walk alone.'”

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission with the mission of overseeing the observance of the MLK holiday was created in the bill signed by Reagan.

In May 1989, Coretta Scott King was made a member of the commission for life by Republican President George H. W. Bush.

Democrats today are trying to usurp Dr. King’s legacy, when in reality it was the Democrats who Dr. King was fighting. See the below article for details.

* * * * * * * *

Democrats Smeared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960’s

By Frances Rice

Character assassination. That’s the tactic used by Democrats in the 1960’s to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican who was fighting the Democrats and trying to stop them from denying civil rights to blacks.

The relentless disparagement of Dr. King by Democrats led to his being physically assaulted and ultimately to his tragic death. In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Prior to his death, Democrats bombed Dr. King’s home several times. The scurrilous efforts by the Democrats to harm Dr. King included spreading rumors that he was a Communist and accusing him of being a womanizer and a plagiarist.

An egregious act against Dr. King occurred on October 10, 1963. With the approval of Democrat President John F. Kennedy, Democrat Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy – President Kennedy’s brother – authorized the wiretapping of Dr. King’s telephone by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Wiretaps were placed by the FBI on the telephones in Dr. King’s home and office. The FBI also bugged Dr. King’s hotel rooms when he traveled around the country.

The trigger for this unsavory wiretapping was apparently Dr. Kings’ criticism of the Kennedy Administration, according to the author David Garrow in his book, “Bearing the Cross”. The justification given by the Kennedy Administration publicly was that two of Dr. King’s associates, including David Levinson, had ended their association with the Communist Party in order to work undercover and influence Dr. King. However, after years of continuous and extensive wiretapping, the FBI found no direct links of Dr. King to the Communist Party.

The unrelenting efforts by Democrats to tarnish Dr. King’s reputation continued for years after his death. To his credit, Republican President Ronald Reagan ignored the Democrats’ smear campaign and made Dr. King’s Birthday a holiday.

Today, while professing to revere Dr. King, Democrats are still trying to tarnish his image by making remarks that diminish his civil rights achievements and continuing to claim that Dr. King embraced Communism – a system that is secularist and socialist.

In reality, Dr. King was a Christian who held deeply religious beliefs and was guided by his faith and his Republican Party principles in his struggle to gain equality for blacks. He did not embrace the type of socialist, secularist agenda that is promoted by the Democrat Party today, which includes fostering dependency on welfare that breaks up families, supporting same-sex marriage and banning God from the public square.

An understanding of who the real Dr. King was can be gained from a glimpse of Dr. King as a young man who participated in an oratorical contest when he was 14 years old. The title of his speech was “The Negro and the Constitution” which had the following sentences: “We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance…We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule….”

If Dr. King were still alive, he would be slandered by Democrats in the same way that they smeared him in the 1960’s and demean all black Republicans today.

Bio: Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She can be contacted at: www.NBRA.info/

Economy, Florida, Media, Pensacola

Don’t Ignore Small Business

The article in the Pensacola News Journal showing the decline in business investment “Top 10 sales fall to $80M” painted a pretty good picture of slowing economic conditions and increasing uncertainty surrounding business investments.

Multi-million dollar projects are one thing. Businesses with those kinds of assets have people, if not departments, to tend to the details. But small business, really small business, the mom and pop venture, is one sector that can benefit with just a little assistance from local government. And the assistance I’m speaking of does not cost a dime.

There’s no better motivation to start a small family business than to find yourself unemployed. Current unemployment figures show there is plenty of opportunity for a new start-up for someone with a passion for a business or product for which there is market demand. Employed or not, you have way more potential to succeed than you know. Being unemployed may be all it takes to make up your mind to jump in with both feet to start your own business. Been there, done that. And there’s no greater satisfaction that I’ve experienced in the workplace than when the workplace is your own.

Depending on the business you have in mind, you may need more than one license, permits, and inspections along the way. You’ll have to comply with city, county, and state laws not only from the financial angle, but also from details like building codes, fire codes, and ADA compliant features that may be required. There are tax issues, federal, state, and local. There are insurance issues if you have employees. Having prior knowledge of these will save you time and money.

Let’s assume that after losing your job, you don’t have a boatload of cash to take your time in getting something going. You cannot afford to start paying rent for months on end while getting things ready. Inspections by various departments and jurisdictions may be required. Some of them must happen in a certain order. Learning this the hard way will cost you something that you can’t replace, time. And you can’t afford the financial setbacks you’ll incur for failing to comply with necessary details, beginning with the loss of business for not being able to open when you expected to.

So you have an idea of what you want to do. Maybe you took the extension courses offered by the University of West Florida on starting your own business? They are good, and inexpensive. For me it was like a college refresher course condensed into a few weeks. Maybe you’ve already run a business, but it wasn’t your own? Maybe you have a college degree in business or management? Those courses are helpful in a general sense, but do not cover the mechanics of what you will need to do in a legal sense, and in what order, before you can open your door for business.

You have a site selected that would be conducive to your business plan. But where do you start? Where do you go locally to get the ‘official guide to opening a business?’ That’s where the city and county can help. And there’s not been a greater need for this kind of help in decades.

Attracting big businesses/employers to the area is fine. Something the government should try to do. But let’s also try to develop the small business potential that is already here.

link: Top 10 sales fall to $80M

Update 1/24/2010: This post was reprinted in the Pensacola News Journal on the opinion page as a Viewpoint: Right time to promote small business growth

Economy, Politics

Open And Honest? Who Knew?

Watch out America. In the name of openness and honesty, Democrats in Washington are poised to show how much smarter they are than you, and the founding fathers.

It never was about stimulating the economy. If it was, they never would have done what the did. That’s why it didn’t take but about 3 months for the Obama administration to tie economic recovery to government-controlled health care-turned-health-insurance ‘reform.’ And the dumb masses bought it.

That was then. Now a majority of Americans are rejecting not only that premise but also are rejecting the extent that government will be controlling our lives  under Obamacare. Those that believe that the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights still mean something would call it restricting personal liberty and freedom through an ever-growing and more powerful central government.

Centralized power is all important. So much so that what you want no longer matters. They are representing The One instead of The People and are prepared to do anything to get there. And if they’re willing to deceive you to get there, then you have to think they’ll do anything to stay there, keeping their majority status for generations and turning America into just another second class European socialistic regime.

There could not be a better example of how, on this issue, Democrats are putting their political agenda ahead of the will of the American people, who they are supposed to be working for.

How could they do that, you ask? What they could do would be to go to reconciliation where only 51 votes are needed instead of 60. And what could they do if Brown (R) should win the senate seat over Coakley (D)?

Massachusetts’s top election official says it could take weeks to certify the results of the upcoming U.S. Senate special election. That delay could let President Barack Obama preserve a key 60th vote for his health care overhaul even if the Republican who has vowed to kill it wins Democrat Edward M. Kennedy’s former seat.

According to Coakley, currently Mass. Atty. General, ‘Until a new senator is sworn in, Sen. Kirk is the senator.’

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) sort of gets it. He said ‘If Scott Brown wins, it’ll kill the health bill.’

I’ve got news for you Barney. If this bill makes it to the President’s desk, it’ll kill America.

Related links:

2010 Election, Economy, Media, Organized Labor, Politics

As Not Seen On CSPAN

Labor union leaders from the SEIU, AFL-CIO, and the UAW met in Washington yesterday to (one could only guess) threaten to withhold support for Democrats in the 2010 election if the President went through with his wanting to levy a tax on people who have a good health insurance policy.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats stand within days if not hours of striking final deals on historic health care legislation after key labor unions won concessions and pledged their support.

What we could not see is the smoke and mirrors accounting they are applying to mask the cost to appease big labor. Taxing those policies was supposed to be part of paying for this plan. Absent that, there’s  more snake-oil on the health insurance menu.

Unfortunately, we could not see this ‘negotiation’ in action like the President said when he was a candidate. We couldn’t see who was representing who, like the President promised he would do, and on this very subject. The negotiations weren’t on either of the two CSPAN channels I get. Did you see it?

link: Health talks in overdrive with Obama pushing

Media, Politics

A Mind-numb Robot And CNN

After the Brown-Coakley debate last week, Martha Coakley went to Washington to attend fundraisers by fat cat lobbyists from the health care industry.  While republican challenger Scott Brown’s campaign received over a million dollars from Americans giving under $80 each.

Forget what that picture looks like, because CNN didn’t bother to mention that Brown seems to have real grassroots support. But lets recall that it was a large number of small contributors that financed the Obama campaign, in addition to big contributions from big labor, big law, and Wall St..

No, the story here is  CNN carrying the water for Coakley, Democrats, and Obamacare in the way they present this story.

Massachusetts Republicans wasted little time Wednesday criticizing Democrat Martha Coakley for attending a fundraiser one week before Bay State voters elect a successor to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

CNN is incapable of reporting what Coakley is doing. Instead, they report it as something Republicans are accusing her of doing.  Somehow, they can’t find a way to criticize her on their own. Something they would have no hesitation or reservation in doing if she were an R instead of a D.

When the media watchdog becomes a mind-numb robot by circling the wagons around hypocrisy, to help a political candidate, it’s safe to say that the media watchdog has died.

Link: CNN:Republicans criticize Coakley for attending DC fundraiser

Uncategorized

R.I.P. Teddy Pendergrass

After a long illness, Teddy Pendergrass dies at 59.

Pendergrass, known for smash love ballads such as “Turn Off the Lights” and “Love TKO,” died after a long illness, according to Lisa Barbaris, who described herself as a close friend and his last publicist. He died at a hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was born.

In 1972, Pendergrass’s baritone could be heard on the classic Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes song “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.”

“Many of you young people are around today because of Teddy.”

h/t Bob Parks @ Black & Right

Media, Politics

It's The People's Seat

Putting arrogance in its rightful place, Scott Brown republican state senator in Massachusetts and republican candidate for the senate seat vacated by the late Sen. Kennedy, answered the loaded question from moderator and CNN political analyst David Gergen about Obamacare. Quite effectively.

Here’s the question from David Gergen, that CNN did not put in the article.

We know from the Clinton experience that if this bill fails, it could well be another fifteen years before we see health care reform efforts in Washington. Are you willing under those circumstances say I’m going to be the person, I’m going to sit in Teddy Kennedy’s seat, and I’m going to be the person that’s going to block it for another fifteen years?

And here’s Brown’s response, which they did, almost. They omitted the last sentence.

Well with all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat. They have a chance to send somebody down there who’s going to be an independent voter and independent thinker — and going to look out for the best interests of the people of Massachusetts. And the way that this bill is configured, I’d like to send it back to the drawing board.

Gergen raising the possibility that if the bill doesn’t pass now, that it may be another 15 years before health care reform comes up again,  painting the republican candidate as some kind of Grinch, while at the same time presuming that health care reform won’t happen unless Democrats do it.

Yeah, I think Brown knocked it and Gergen out of the park.

link: Race for Kennedy’s seat may affect health care reform

Belly up to the counter. Politics are on the menu and Ross is on the grill.