Tag Archives: Economy

Obama Caves To Greens, Rejects XL Pipeline

Moving right along to govern against the will of the people, President Obama, and his sidekick Sec. of State John Kerry, rejected  the largest energy-related infrastructure project in decades, the Keystone XL pipeline.

What the media calls a victory for “the greens,” the American people call a government that operates for special interests who put dollars in campaign coffers. Which is why Gallup comes up with this, “Americans Name Government as No. 1 U.S. Problem.”

Despite the State Department’s own environmental impact study which says having the XL Pipeline will reduce carbon emissions compared to not having it, President Obama turns out to be against it for political reasons instead of for it for economic and scientific reasons. (It’s what community organizers do.)

Canadian tar sands are likely to be developed regardless of U.S. action on the pipeline, the report said, and other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries — including rail, trucks and barges — would be worse for climate change.

Since this oil is going to be extracted anyway, what is to gain by not allowing the XL pipeline? That’s easy, it will be carried on Warren Buffet’s (Obama contributor and activist) railroad, with the exploding trains instead?

And did I mention that the American people think government is the number one problem? And who’s been in charge again?

Links: Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline in win for greens  |  Fellow Democrats press Obama to approve Keystone, following environmental report  |  Americans Name Government as No. 1 U.S. Problem

Immigration System And The Meme

One of the biggest lies perpetrated on the American people is over immigration.  The lie is “the immigration system is broken.”

Enforce the law and see how well it works. Allowing sanctuary cities to exist is not a fault of immigration law.  That has nothing to do with immigration law. End them.

Democrats, the Chamber of Commerce, and RINOs are the ones claiming the system is broken, and that “comprehensive” immigration reform is needed. What that means is amnesty, striking current immigration laws, not enforcing them, open borders, and chain immigration.

The first two want illegals but for different reasons. For Democrats, illegals are a ready-made constituency, already familiar with socialism and eager to get the free stuff Democrats are offering. They are, essentially, undocumented democrats. 30 million of them.

The Chamber of Commerce looks at the illegals as cheap labor. They don’t care about the law or the negative pressure they place on wages of American citizens. Cheap(er) labor means more profits.

The establishment Republican Party want’s “comprehensive immigration reform” because they believe the meme that they’ll not get elected without supporting it. Not only a total pander, but a meme not based in reality. Romney’s loss was not because he didn’t get more Hispanics to vote for him. Romney lost because 3 million republicans stayed home.

All the groups pull out the straw-man argument that “we can’t round up 30 million people and deport them.” No one is suggesting any “round-up.”

The solution is simple and, not extreme. Enforce existing law.

Ceiling? What Ceiling?

Treasury Secretary, Jacob Lew, has warned that the U.S. will breach its “debt ceiling” on November 3, if Congress does not act to raise it. While raising the debt ceiling has been used in the past as a leverage point for negotiations on other issues, President Obama indicated on Friday that he would veto anything less than a “clean bill” to raise the limit. The House is expected to vote on the bill next week. House Freedom Caucus members will likely oppose the bill, meaning outgoing Speaker John Boehner will have to rely on Democratic votes as he “clear the barn” of these contentious issues before passing the gavel to a successor.

As if doubling the national debt during his term isn’t enough, the agenda of the political class in Washington could not be more clear. The word “ceiling” means nothing,  and making a real budget is not in the future either.

h/t PopVox

aSide Order

Democratic Socialist Debate On CNN

Americans, illegals, and future illegals were treated to a triple dip of taxing, spending, and free stuff as the Democrat Party’s vision for America. Like most everything they’ve been supporting since 2008, it has been the turning everything we know upside-down. From the American dream and capitalism, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and any hint of fiscal responsibility. It also was the first Democratic debate I’ve seen where an Independent was included. Were it not for the Independent (avowed socialist) Bernie Sanders, the TV viewing audience would have been down to friends and relatives of CNN employees.

Wealth envy and class warfare, with a heaping topping of race divisiveness were also evident. Basically, they get their power from pitting Americans against each other by creating victims, villains, and the savior. Not Jesus Christ, but them and their Party. Exhibiting a moral standard  of the lowest of society, with expectations to match.

Doubling the national debt since 2008, and proposing to double it again with all the “free stuff,” and ignoring the already unsustainable unfunded mandates (Social Security, Medicare) that exceed $100 trillion, were not even considered. Essentially, what we saw was a race to the bottom if Democrats keep The White House in 2016.

They also were bold to say how they would circumvent Congress and the Bill of Rights. The 1st and 2nd Amendments to this bunch are not principles to be protected. Instead, they are obstacles to their rule.

The most amusing thing to see was how they all trashed Obama’s seven years in office with no jobs, low wages, brutal police in Democrat strongholds,  and the bad Iran deal. You know, that deal they were for before they were against it. They all were talking as though a Republican has been in power for the last seven years.

endofstory

Hillary’s First Night As President ??

Hillary Clinton was sworn in today as President. She has disposed of Bill and is spending her first night alone in the White House. She has waited several years for this!

FIRST NIGHT

Suddenly! The ghost of George Washington appears to her, and Hillary says, “How can I best serve my country?”

Washington says, “Never tell a lie.”

“Ouch!” Says Hillary, “I don’t know about that.”

SECOND NIGHT

The next night, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears…?

Hillary says, “How can I best serve my country?”

Jefferson says, “Listen to the people.”

“Ohhh! I really really don’t want to do that.”

THIRD NIGHT

On the third night, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln appears…?

Hillary says, “How can I best serve my country?”

Lincoln says,

“Go to the theater.”

endofstory

The Ambidextrous Lady Golfer

A group of men live and die for their Saturday morning golf game. One transfers to another city and they’re lost without him.
A new woman joins their Club. When she hears the guys talking about their golf round, she says, “I played on my college’s golf team. I was pretty good. Mind if I join you next week?”

No one wants to say ‘yes’, but they’re on the spot. Finally, one man says. Okay, but we start at 6:30 a.m. He figures the early tee-time will discourage her. The woman says this may be a problem, and asks if she can be up to 15 minutes late.

They roll their eyes, but say, “Okay”. But she’s there at 6:30 a.m. sharp, and beats all of them with an eye-opening 2-under par round. She’s fun and pleasant, and the guys are impressed. They congratulate her and invite her back the next week. She smiles, and says, “I’ll be there at 6:30 or 6:45.”

The next week she again shows up again at 6:30 sharp. Only this time, she plays left-handed. The three guys are incredulous as she still beats them with an even par round, despite playing with her off-hand. They’re totally amazed. They can’t figure her out. But she’s very pleasant and a gracious winner. They invite her back again, but each man harbours a burning desire to beat her.

The third week, she’s 15 minutes late this time, which irritates the guys. This week she plays right-handed again, but narrowly beats all three of them. The men grumble that her late arrival is petty gamesmanship on her part. However, she’s so charming and complimentary of their strong play, they can’t hold a grudge.

Still, this woman is a riddle no one can figure out. They have a couple of beers in the Clubhouse, and finally, one of the men asks her, “How do you decide if you’re going to golf right-handed or left-handed?”
The lady blushes, and grins. “When my Dad taught me to play golf, I learned I was ambidextrous,” she replies. “I like to switch back and forth. When I got married after college, I discovered my husband always sleeps in the nude. From then on, I developed a silly habit….
Right before I leave in the morning for golf practice, I pull the covers off him. If his Willie points to the right, I golf right-handed; if it points to the left, I golf left-handed.”

The guys think this is hysterical. Astonished at this bizarre information, one of the guys says, “What if it’s pointing straight up?”
She says, “Then, I’m fifteen minutes late.”

Greece’s Tsipras Wins Re-election

Alexis Tsipras has hailed a “victory of the people” after his left-wing Syriza party won Greece’s fifth election in six years. Mr. Tsipras said his decision to call an early election was vindicated and that he had been given a clear mandate.

Since Greece produces very little in terms of manufacturing, they rely on imports to exist. Manufacturing is down 40% and imports are down 33%. The Greek economy was growing in the second half of last year. Businesses began hedging their bets for expansion when ‘capital control’ started in July. Now, investments have dried up completely. Now the Tsipras government is poised to take even more of their profits.

Many businesses can’t pay their suppliers without getting special permission for a loan from the central bank. How’s that for instilling business confidence? Unemployment is over 25% and youth unemployment is over 50%. And Greece’s economy is tanking.

Rejecting the EU, IMF, the ECB, Greece seems to have given Tsipras a mandate to suicide.

Link: Greece election: Alexis Tsipras hails ‘victory of the people’

Anchor Babies

Justice Brennan’s Footnote Gave Us Anchor Babies

Democrats act as if the right to run across the border when you’re 8 1/2 months pregnant, give birth in a U.S. hospital and then immediately start collecting welfare was exactly what our forebears had in mind, a sacred constitutional right, as old as the 14th Amendment itself.

The louder liberals talk about some ancient constitutional right, the surer you should be that it was invented in the last few decades.

In fact, this alleged right derives only from a footnote slyly slipped into a Supreme Court opinion by Justice Brennan in 1982. You might say it snuck in when no one was looking, and now we have to let it stay.

The 14th Amendment was added after the Civil War in order to overrule the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which had held that black slaves were not citizens of the United States. The precise purpose of the amendment was to stop sleazy Southern states from denying citizenship rights to newly freed slaves — many of whom had roots in this country longer than a lot of white people.

The amendment guaranteed that freed slaves would have all the privileges of citizenship by providing: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The drafters of the 14th amendment had no intention of conferring citizenship on the children of aliens who happened to be born in the U.S. (For my younger readers, back in those days, people cleaned their own houses and raised their own kids.)

Inasmuch as America was not the massive welfare state operating as a magnet for malingerers, frauds and cheats that it is today, it’s amazing the drafters even considered the amendment’s effect on the children of aliens.

But they did.

The very author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, expressly said: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”

In the 1884 case Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not even confer citizenship on Indians — because they were subject to tribal jurisdiction, not U.S. jurisdiction.

For a hundred years, that was how it stood, with only one case adding the caveat that children born to legal permanent residents of the U.S., gainfully employed, and who were not employed by a foreign government would also be deemed citizens under the 14th Amendment. (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898.)

And then, out of the blue in 1982, Justice Brennan slipped a footnote into his 5-4 opinion in Plyler v. Doe, asserting that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” (Other than the part about one being lawful and the other not.)

Brennan’s authority for this lunatic statement was that it appeared in a 1912 book written by Clement L. Bouve. (Yes, the Clement L. Bouve — the one you’ve heard so much about over the years.) Bouve was not a senator, not an elected official, certainly not a judge — just some guy who wrote a book.

So on one hand we have the history, the objective, the author’s intent and 100 years of history of the 14th Amendment, which says that the 14th Amendment does not confer citizenship on children born to illegal immigrants.

On the other hand, we have a random outburst by some guy named Clement — who, I’m guessing, was too cheap to hire an American housekeeper.

Any half-wit, including Clement L. Bouve, could conjure up a raft of such “plausible distinction(s)” before breakfast. Among them: Legal immigrants have been checked for subversive ties, contagious diseases, and have some qualification to be here other than “lives within walking distance.”

But most important, Americans have a right to decide, as the people of other countries do, who becomes a citizen.

Combine Justice Brennan’s footnote with America’s ludicrously generous welfare policies, and you end up with a bankrupt country.

Consider the story of one family of illegal immigrants described in the Spring 2005 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons:

“Cristobal Silverio came illegally from Oxtotilan, Mexico, in 1997 and brought his wife Felipa, plus three children aged 19, 12 and 8. Felipa … gave birth to a new daughter, her anchor baby, named Flor. Flor was premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator, and cost San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, (Felipa’s 19-year-old daughter) Lourdes plus her illegal alien husband produced their own anchor baby, Esmeralda. Grandma Felipa created a second anchor baby, Cristian. … The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding. Flor gets $600 per month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. Cristobal and Felipa last year earned $18,000 picking fruit. Flor and Cristian were paid $12,000 for being anchor babies.”

In the Silverios’ munificent new hometown of Stockton, Calif., 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in 2003 in the San Joaquin General Hospital were anchor babies. As of this month, Stockton is $23 million in the hole.

It’s bad enough to be governed by 5-4 decisions written by liberal judicial activists. In the case of “anchor babies,” America is being governed by Brennan’s 1982 footnote.

endofstory

The above graciously lifted from Ann Coulter. Because I bet you didn’t know.

 

Still Thinking Obamacare Is Affordable?

It’s so affordable that the Obama administration had to prime the insurance industry with payoffs for their losses for getting onboard with the misnamed Affordable Care Act. Those payoffs end next year.

And already, despite the government’s best efforts to use taxpayer money to give the illusion that it is working as advertised, it is not. And those payoffs are supposed to end in 2016.

It may not be performing as advertised. But, it is working exactly as planned. The pathway to single-payer healthcare is widening.

State-run health insurance markets that offer coverage under President Barack Obama’s health law are struggling with high costs and disappointing enrollment. These challenges could lead more of them to turn over operations to the federal government or join forces with other states.

Critics of Obamacare saw it coming long before it was rammed down America’s collective throat. But they were dismissed by the Left and its media being racists, not liking the government takeover of 16% of the private economy and ruining the health insurance industry just because Obama is Black. As if it would be OK if Obama were only White.

On this legislation, there’s no victory lap for being right. So far it’s a moot point, because electing a Republican majority in both the House and Senate with a mandate to repeal it has failed. It has failed because those Republicans have betrayed their constituents by failing to do what they were elected to do. They have caved on every plank of that mandate.

There are way too few republicans running for president with the gonads to turn this ship around. Most of them are responsible for running full speed ahead.

Links: State health insurance markets struggle with cost challenges   |  OBAMACARE HIGHLIGHTS AND RACKETEERING

Unemployment Rate 10.5%, Not 5.3%

You’ve seen it on the news, “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in June, and the unemployment rate declined to 5.3 percent.” That, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Wasting not a millisecond, President Obama is in front of a camera touting his progress. The only problem is that there is no progress. As pointed out earlier here, several times, the unemployment rate isn’t dropping because more people are working. It’s dropping because the BLS has stopped counting all the unemployed for the low numbers that the media and The White House are bragging about.

The 5.3% you see in the news, is known as the U-3 report. That rate went down from 5.5% in May 2015. And, 223,000 jobs were created in June. That’s not enough new jobs to break even when retirements, deaths, and population growth are considered. That’s why the labor participation rate is at Jimmy Carter era levels, and has been for years.

The unemployment rate dropped .2% for June from May’s 5.5% because for the month of June, 432,000 dropped out of the labor force. Which means, they’re no longer counted. It’s as though they don’t exist for purposes of calculating the U-3 unemployment rate. The real unemployment rate, known as the U-6, is 10.5%.

Don’t be surprised to see the U-3 to get below 5% before President Obama’s term ends. Just remember why. It’s not because of net new jobs being created. It’s because of not counting all who are not working, and counting people getting a second or third job to make ends meet are counted as a new job being created. Part of that 223,000 number.

What Rotting On The Vine Looks Like

The cultural decay of America didn’t just happen in the last couple decades. This was proscribed in American culture three-quarters of a century ago.

A political party, running from decades of racial discrimination, and the pop culture of the 1960’s in the form of its music and entertainment, gave the process a booster shot.

The pilfering of Social Security’s so-called “lock-box” to fund welfare programs, and a youth anti-war movement that embraced the “Love the one you’re with” mindset,  magnified by a non-critical news media were the termites introduced to American society. Defeating liberalism is the treatment.

Walter E. Williams’ chronicles this in a way that no one else has, in this piece, Intellectual Dishonesty and Cultural and Social Pathology. Continue reading What Rotting On The Vine Looks Like

Pres. Obama Wins M.R.I.O.T.D. Award

Speaking with Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Fellows at the White House, President Barack Obama said that under his leadership, the United States has become the most respected country in the world.

Of course, these weren’t real world leaders. The real leaders were at home ROTFL. These were students, who probably knew better.

This assertion is like his assertion that he has this economy in a recovery, while there is not a single economic measure that would support that claim. Beginning with, he economy is contracting, lowest worker participation rate since Jimmy Carter, real unemployment rate is north of 10%, more businesses are closing than are opening, and, a record number of people are on government assistance and food stamps.

On the world stage, every country he has had a hand in has been a disaster. Starting with the United States, the Arab Spring, Benghazi, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China, and the rise and strengthening of terrorists around the world.

The winning statement . . .

and today once again, the United States is the most respected country on earth

For this, President Obama wins the award for the Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day award. For the third time.

Links: President Obama: Under My Leadership, US Once Again Most Respected Country on Earth  |  Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Fellows