There is a lot of anger toward President Obama, this time from Democrats and the far Left Progressives. They vehemently disagree with his posture over not increasing taxes on ‘the rich.’ Well, if what was said about Republicans’ anger at Obama’s policies is any indication, isn’t it now obvious? These Democrats are all racists. They’re just objecting and are angry at him because he is black. Oh, and they’re haters too!
related link: Is Jimmy Carter Right?
After checking out The White House blog’s piece about ANWR’s 50th anniversary, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful picture they put up at the boundary of the coastal plain.
So it seems it is time to resurrect my ANWR Refuge 101 post again. Just so you won’t be mis-informed on the subject of oil exploration in ANWR and exactly where it would occur.
Picture from The White House Blog:
This is the coastal plain, the place designated for oil exploration. 
And this is the coastal plain in the spring.
Link: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Turns 50 | The White House.
Remember the pay freeze for federal workers that President Obama touted? Said he was setting an example of being fiscally responsible, or conservative. Reducing
the debt. It’s all BS. The ONLY component of pay that is frozen is the COLA.
When will we ever hear the truth come from his lips?
Link: Federal workers will still receive raises despite pay freeze | The Daily Caller
That class warfare and wealth envy play very well from the Left’s playbook is no surprise. Especially to the dumb masses. From Obama on down, and with the help of the media to carry the water for them, ‘tax cuts for the rich’ seem to be the mantra. Well, that and Republicans don’t want to extend unemployment benefits, yet they want tax cuts for the rich. And at Christmas time no less. Grinch!
There are two truths that blow the Left’s demagoguery out of the water, that the media has no interest in exposing. First, regarding extending unemployment. Regardless of what Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) says, Republicans have no objection to extending unemployment. After all, it would be a spending bill. And, like all spending bills, must be paid for. That’s according to Nancy Pelosi and her party’s PayGo legislation. The concept of PayGo was to not increase the debt. So pay for it already. Pay for it by cutting some other spending from somewhere else, or better yet, pay for it from the hundreds of billions of dollars that are still unspent from the porkulus bill. Pay for it. As a matter of fact, why not throw in an extra $100 as a stocking stuffer. There’s enough money to do it. Republicans would pass it. But, Democrats would lose their demonization tool. Sorry, can’t do that.
The next truth is that cutting taxes increases revenue. Not only does it increase revenue, but the percent that the evil rich pay actually goes up, not down. It is not, contrary to popular opinion, a cost. And certainly nothing that has to be borrowed, like Ms. Pelosi says. And it does not increase the debt. Cutting taxes is an incentive to produce. Cutting taxes leaves the money where it will be of most use. With the people who earned it. The Left quotes the CBO on tax cuts as being a cost. That’s because, by law, the CBO has to calculate everything as a static, zero sum game. They can not, by law, consider changes in behavior or consequences in the market place that a tax law or tax adjustment would cause. This is a fallacy in real life. They assume that by raising taxes by X percent, that they will actually get X percent more in revenue. And if taxes are cut by X percent, then the revenue will be decreased by X percent. Well, sorry Nancy. History and the laws of free-market economics tell a contradictory story.
Thomas Sowell writes . . .
Over that long span of time, there have been many sharp cuts in tax rates under Presidents Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. So we don’t need to argue in a vacuum. There is a track record.
What does that record say? It says, loud and clear, that cuts in tax rates do not mean cuts in tax revenues. In all four of these administrations, of both parties, so-called “tax cuts for the rich” led to increased tax revenues— with people earning high incomes paying not only a larger sum total of tax revenues, but even a higher proportion of all tax revenues.
But when confronted with this concept, President Obama acknowledged that yes, even though revenues increased, that it was more important ‘to him’ to go the wealth envy route in the name of social justice and fairness. So while Democrats claim to want to increase revenues, they really don’t.
So, where are all, or any, Republican leaders in Congress talking about this? Grow a pair and tell it like it is. Show the Democrats for the class warfare demagogues that they are. Preferring to keep people down rather than lift them up.
Link: Can Republicans Talk? | Can Republicans Talk?: Part II
It’s not surprising that the St. Petersburg Times would come out with an editorial supporting the President’s about face on opening up 25 million acres of land off of Florida’s coast to oil exploration. They also thought that shutting down ALL oil drilling in the entire Gulf of Mexico by ALL oil companies was a good idea too! It reflects the knee-jerk reaction to pressure from the environmentalist lobby who, last I checked, does not produce energy.
Critics of the plan, like State Senate President Mike Haridopolos, are right to say that the Florida ban will cost jobs. It is preventing jobs from being created. Forget that ‘saved or created’ nonsense. This, like the rest of Obama’s economic policies are preventing jobs from being created and the economy from recovering.
Out of the lost wages and earnings, all of which BP is responsible for replacing, the Times did not give a number of jobs lost due to the leak. And didn’t BP put thousands of people to work (because of the leak) all over the Gulf coast to do the cleanup work? Sorry to say, but devastating hurricanes create jobs and work too! This is no more a justification for lax safety procedures than a hope for another accident. Point is, we can recover from accidents and disasters.
The jobs lost by extending this Florida waters moratorium another 12 years is real. Likewise, the jobs lost from our president and Ken Salazar putting the drilling moratorium in effect for all drilling in the Gulf in the wake of the 4/20 BP rig explosion was ignored by the St. Pete Times. But, that is to be expected of them.
It’s been 15 years since the Clinton administration put the kibosh on ANWR development, which would have long been producing energy by now had that not happened. Now we’re to wait twelve more years for Florida and the Eastern U.S. to use its resources?
Time is long overdue for an energy policy that gets some. In every area. How many new nuclear generating plants have opened in the last 20 years? How many new refineries have been built in the last 20 years? Did you know that 57% (that’s more than half for those of you educated in government schools) of our electrical energy comes from coal? How many new coal-fired electrical generating plants have been built in the last 20 years? So President Clinton made our nation’s only low sulfur coal reserves (the largest in the world) off-limits, handing China a monopoly. And banning oil development off our East and Gulf coasts, leaves OPEC to profit. Buying coal from China and oil from OPEC is not good for national security, nor is it a good energy policy.
Long story short. Unless you expect the energy industry to make environmental guidelines, don’t expect the environmentalists to make energy policy.
Link: Shelving expanded gulf oil drilling is responsible course | Oil spills kill jobs
Something got passed yesterday in the Senate. Do you know which pressing issue of the day it was?
It was item 4. Officially called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM Act, S. 2847. You know they must pay someone a lot of bucks to come up with acronyms before actually naming these bills.
But of course, as with all important legislation, like Obamacare for instance, waivers are also part of the picture. Or speaker. So what’s the point? According to the list of sponsors, is a Democrat-only bill.
The only thing I can think of that is good about this bill is the process it went through. It was taken up and voted on. It wasn’t hidden inside a non-related bill in order to be snuck into law, like was tried with Card Check or re-extending unemployment checks.
There is no doubt that getting blasted by the volume on a TV commercial is an issue that needs to be dealt with. But is it more important than turning our economy around or getting control of our borders? The fact that any Senator would have wasted their/our time on the CALM Act in this session of Congress is . . . what’s the word?
So for this colossal waste of time, this lame duck Congress, emphasis on lame, is the recipient of the Most Rediculous Item Of The Day Award.
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Since North Korea violated the term of the ceasefire signed on July 27, 1953 when they shelled South Korea on November 23, 2010, and now North Korea is ‘warning’ the U.S. and South Korea to not train together or they will fire some more, what is the United States’ response?
Our President ‘condemns’ North Korea for their ‘provocative’ attacks on the South. More ‘words, just words.’ And, he pardons two turkeys on The White House lawn. Seems to me that our president is trying to ignore the problem. Only this problem won’t go away because Obama wants it to.
Kim Jong Ill is testing President Obama and so far, he has fumbled his 3 a.m. call. Or like most of his legislative record in Illinois, is still voting present, not doing or saying anything. Like all of his opponents (democrat and republican) in the 2008 election said, Barack Obama is not ready for prime time. We are paying the price for putting an empty suit in The White House. Both economically and in terms of national security.
And, has anyone heard from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who North Korea has called a ‘funny lady,’ on this subject?
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Is the TSA making us safe? Have they ever caught a terrorist entering a gate? Unless you live under the overpass in a Kenmore refrigerator double-wide cardboard box, you’ve heard all the attention that the new screening techniques has been getting in the news lately.
It is interesting to me, if not puzzling, to note the alternate universe of opinion about it. From a political perspective, there seems to have been some sort of role reversal. The hawks on the Right, who one would think would embrace this crotch grabbing of airline passengers, back away from it. Not only because they think there is a better, and less intrusive, way to accomplish the same goal, but also because of Constitutional protections and privacy rights that are being violated. The pacifists on the Left, who one would think would have a cow at such invasions of privacy (especially if the president was an R), generally don’t see any problem with feeling up your wife, daughter, or 5 year-old son. Considering the terrorists have hidden explosives inside the body orifices, what’s next for the TSA?
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was interviewed by talk radio host Alex Jones on the subject . . .
Responding to Alex Jones’ assertion that the TSA’s actions are akin to what the Nazis did in Germany during the 1930s, Ron Paul said that we long ago capitulated on “showing our papers” and now routinely provide Social Security numbers to employers and show our government issued driver’s license as an accepted form of identification. “Now the government wants us to show them our genitalia and they want to take pictures of us and put their hands into our pants,” he said.
How did the Obama administration’s TSA and Homeland Security get to this point? I think Ann Coulter nailed it in this one sentence, ‘Only because the terrorists are Muslims do we pretend not to notice who keeps trying to blow up our planes.’
(The rumor that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) went back in line after being screened has not yet been confirmed.)
Link: Ron Paul: Crotch Groped by TSA, Calls for Boycott of Airlines
In fact, it worked for Russia and Argentina. In fact, to keep ‘bailouts’ on the table for countries that are currently set up to spend more than they take in is, I’ll use a technical word here, crazy. It is a waste of everyone else’s money and does not solve the problem.
Socialist states must restructure. The post WWII boom days are over. The demographics are nothing like they were 50 years ago. And ‘reform’ means ‘taking away.’
The cure means a new economic model for Europe. The lesson for the United States is that transforming America into the image of Europe is not only the absolute wrong direction for our country, but is antithetical to President Obama’s responsibility of being the steward of the country and the Constitution.
Link: In European Debt Crisis, Some Call Default Better Option | The State Of The Welfare State
It should come as no surprise that Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted on 285 of 286 charges relating to his involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 262 people. This trial highlights the fact that the American criminal justice system is no place to try Guantanamo Bay detainees, aka enemy combatants. It also is the cause of criticism directed to Attorney General Holder to step down.
Bringing Club Gitmo detainees to trial in New York is just a continuance of Eric Holder’s defense (as opposed to prosecution) of these enemy combatants. Defending them is what he did at his New York law firm Covington & Burling. That the trial of these Islamic extremists is more politically motivated (in Obama’s mind) than constitutionally motivated (to protect and defend) is evident when you consider that eight years ago, Holder was of the position that the Gitmo detainees did not qualify for protection under the Geneva Convention. The right and only place for their trials is via a military tribunal at Club Gitmo.
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