Back Talk

My blogging days are over for a few weeks; going on an extended vacation.

Posted by Jim at 05:46 PM | Permalink

If Obama is elected, he will take the country over a cliff. He has said repeatedly, he will raise taxes.

He said he would raise the capital gains tax on investments, a strong validation of his ignorance of our economic history that indicates decreasing the capital gains tax boosts investment and helps the economy. He is the second coming of our worst President, Jimmy Carter, only magnified. Carter took the country’s economy into no-growth stagflation with high taxes, double digit unemployment figures, a national money shortage, and 20% interest. Carter came down hard on the oil companies because he thought they made too much money; Hussein is taking the same misguided path. Such actions will either increase the price of gas or create gas line shortages, or both, just as during the bad old Carter days. We haven’t seen anything yet. The most liberal Senator has declared he would reinstall the death tax and increase the income shutoff before taxpayers are free from social security tax. Democrats took control of both houses of congress two years ago and our economy has suffered. Unemployment was at all all-time low of 4.4 percent, inflation was only 2 percent, wage growth was double that at 4 percent, gasoline pump price was $2.10 nationally, and worker productivity up. Without a Republican president to veto the Democrat barrage of taxes, runaway entitlement spending, and restrictions upon business, we can expect the worst conditions the country has experienced in our lifetime.

Posted by Jim at 05:43 PM | Permalink

Obama knows how to play the populist game; he can demagogue with the best of them.

He regularly rags on big business, particularly “big oil,” and any American entrepreneur who has done well. Season that with a genuine ignorance of economics – lawyers can’t waste time on economics when they need to learn how to make a lot of money suing doctors – and you have a real crowd pleaser. A Black George Wallace. It is even money whether he is just another DemPol catering to the more base feelings of American working people, jealousy and envy, or if he really is an economics moron when he said the oil industry lobbyists, with their campaign contributions, have caused the high price of gas. Or when he often condemns the huge revenues of the oil companies without mentioning that total oil company profits from all sources including investments average 11% - not an unusual figure for a large company. The man makes scattergun wild and dishonest statements that sound provocative but don’t stand up to scrutiny. He said the “courts serve mostly big business.” He said the problem with our failing school system is that it fails to teach creativity. He used an example of a predominately Hispanic Colorado high school, suffering from a 50% graduation rate, that started a “creative” approach including education in various music genres and African/American culture and in two years had a 100% graduation rate with nearly 100% enrollment in college. Two things: first: this is flat-out ridiculous; second: I don’t believe it. It is reminiscent of Hillary’s story of sitting on a flak jacket when her airplane landed in Bosnia. A DemPol invention rather like Al Gore’s invention of the internet.

Posted by Jim at 05:51 PM | Permalink

The troubling thing about Barack Obama is not that he lies; all lawyer/politicians lie.

It is that he does it so convincingly and articulately. He said he had never realized the extent of the anti-American views of Reverend Wright in their close twenty year relationship. He similarly had not known the anti-American views of domestic terrorist William Ayers after an 18 year relationship – pretty obtuse for a Harvard law grad. When he came under the gun for his statement that he would meet, without preconditions, the Iranian madman dictator, he said, well, the precondition thing was “only if he decided to meet with Iran,” and he hadn’t really decided. Um hum. When Sen. Clinton voted to declare the Revolutionary Guard a terror organization, Obama criticized her, and said the vote was irresponsibly militant. Later, he told an Israeli group that the Revolutionary Guard is, indeed, a terror organization. Um hum. He told America's leading pro-Israel lobby - that he supports a two-state solution, with Jerusalem as the sole, undivided capital of Israel. Hamas, the Palestinian terror group, unhappy with this statement, said he was no different from Bush – no doubt endangering their endorsement of Obama - so, adaptable guy that he is, the very next day, speaking to a different group, he said "obviously, the issue of Jerusalem should be decided by the Israelis and Palestinians.” As if Obama didn’t have enough problems having to constantly clean up after his own remarks, he has a big mouth wife who constantly makes anti-American and anti good-sense statements, causing his campaign to scramble to repair them. Latest episode: a story making the rounds that she used the term “Whitey” in public to describe non-Blacks, a term she may not have used but is accepted as fact by many because it is believable.

Posted by Jim at 04:36 PM | Permalink

The list of Barack Hussein Obama’s questionable associations keeps growing.

Washington Democrat insider Jim Johnson, the man Obama chose to lead the search for his running mate, didn’t take long to come under fire for a history of questionable – at the very least – ethics. A Wall Street Journal article unveiled the fact that Johnson received loans worth $1.7 million from the sub-prime lender, Countrywide Home Loans, through a special arrangement for special terms from a company embroiled in the nation's mortgage crisis. Johnson, the Fannie Mae head from 1991 through 1998, received more than $7 million in real estate loans from a program open only to friends of Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial Corporation.
Good lawyer/politician that he is, Obama quickly reacted to the newest challenge with a little tap dance and word parsing rationalizations to attempt to squeeze by, but in a couple of days he did the politician polka and threw Johnson to the wolves just as he did to 20-year friend and minister Reverend Wright and even his white grandmother whom he called a bigot.
He made quick work of his foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, and encouraged her to leave his campaign almost immediately after she endangered some votes by calling Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster."
Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s economic advisor, committed the political no-no of truth-telling when he told the Canadian government that his boss was just playing politics (translation: he lied) when he told an Ohio audience that he is against NAFTA; that he actually favored NAFTA. And so it goes.

Posted by Jim at 06:17 PM | Permalink

We are getting a good look at how our Democrat politicians act when they are provoked.

The provocation is the price of gas that has set the country spinning on its axis. When the public becomes unhappy, all politicians feel obliged to do something, anything, to make the public think they are responsive to their needs, since a politician’s only real goal in life is to keep his cushy, lucrative, prestigious job. So, in response to the gas crisis, the DemPols dug into their playbook and came up with standard plays: first, they shift the blame away from themselves since they are responsible for the high gas prices. They sold out to the enviro-wacko lobby years ago, starting with Bill Clinton’s veto of the congressional bill to recover our own oil from ANWAR. They have blocked any oil drilling off our coasts or in ANWAR, and prevented construction of any new refineries in the last 30 years. They need a strong case here because anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of supply and demand knows that a growing demand coupled with a fixed supply causes the price to increase. In addition to squelching any of our own development, the DemPols have made us hostages of Middle East dictators who can shut down our oil supply at will. They take the easiest scapegoat and blame the oil companies, invite a few oil execs in for hearings, rake them over the coals for a few hours, and make a show for TV. They claim the oil companies make excessive profits, even though those companies make 4% profit on a gallon of gas and the government makes approximately 15%. They mislead the public into thinking American Oil companies control the world oil and gas market when, in fact, they only control 7% of it. For their final act, the DemPols invariably make the situation worse by taking some action or passing some bureaucratic bill that costs the taxpayer and has bad unintended consequences. In this case, they announced they are going to punish the oil companies by levying some special taxes upon them. This action is pure crowd-pleasing duplicity and particularly dishonest because they must know that it will result in even higher gas prices. Like all businesses, oil companies treat taxes as a business expense and pass it on to the public. As is always, always, always the case, the problem with expensive oil and gas is not big oil, it is big government.

Posted by Jim at 08:19 AM | Permalink

The first time I read that world Socialists are the driving force behind the environmental movement because they see it as a way to cut the legs off of the U.S. economy and destroy capitalism, I felt it was a little too conspiratorial sounding for credibility. Now, I believe it to be true.

I exclude Zealots like Al Gore and the Hollywood activists who are merely well-meaning dupes who want to attract attention and feel good about themselves. Gore served up the environmental pig to the lemming-like media, the media ate the whole pig, and then went to work propagandizing the public. We regularly see some publicity-hungry scientist string together a few quasi-technical terms about green house effect, the ozone, and publishes a study accusing man-made global warming of causing everything from hurricanes to hives. To appear precise, he might give a statistical confidence level of say 85%. Beware folks, any time a scientist gives a percentage of confidence in his results, you are not witnessing science; you are seeing a feeble attempt to prove a preconceived notion without true scientific proof. There are many of these crusaders out there beating the drums of environmentalism without any real scientific foundation and claiming world destruction if their warnings are ignored. In 1972, the enviro-wackos warned us of global cooling. Rachel Carson's anti-pesticide diatribe "Silent Spring," published in 1962 caused a ban on DDT and the subsequent death of a million deaths every year of malaria, which had been virtually eradicated at that point by DDT. Twelve years later a scientific panel found the DDT scare was unsubstantiated but, by then, world opinion was so entrenched against the pesticide that it is not used to this day. Crusader Ralph Nader single handedly destroyed the Chevrolet Corvair with his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, and a few years later the Federal Safety Board found the car to be no more dangerous than any other car in that category.

Posted by Jim at 04:20 PM | Permalink

One can’t help wondering whether it is merely coincidental or if the various stories coming out of Minnesota and particularly Minneapolis indicate that the upper Midwestern enclave has become kind of a leftwing hotbed of Marxism akin to our Berkeley/San Francisco embarrassment.

Latest news: the Minneapolis city council has banned car idling for more than three minutes to decrease the carbon output. It takes 5 minutes for a car’s oil to thaw enough to flow in Minnesota winters. I see also that Minnesota Democrats have voted for standup comedian Franken as their representative. Franken was only moderately funny as a comedian and not funny at all when he was fined for tax evasion in both New York and California. Remember, this is the same state that elected Jesse (the body Ventura) as governor. We seem to regularly see stories of Minnesota teachers indoctrinating their charges with the leftist mindset. This is where some middle-schoolers refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. This is where a high school cancelled a scheduled visit by nationally touring decorated war veterans because it was “too political.” My favorite: a small contingent of enviromental wackos held a protest demonstration in the Berkeley of the upper Midwest to warn of man made global warming. It turned out to be an unusually cold day in a snowstorm.

Posted by Jim at 12:38 PM | Permalink

Congratulations Democrat Party. You have selected as your Presidential nominee a glib, attractive, young and inexperienced empty suit. A soap bubble – attractive on the outside, empty inside.

That is not to say that he is not smart or that he has knowledge. He gave a terrific nominee-acceptance speech which proves again that he can say nothing better than just about any other politician. As a trained lawyer who, in addition to knowing how to lie convincingly, is no doubt knowledgeable about contract law, torts, and property law. The problem is that the man is an ignoramus in Economics, world affairs, and World and American History – the very areas of which the leader of the free world should have expert knowledge. The man is a lightweight that the media, in its usual mode of lemmings jumping off the cliff together, almost single-handedly pushed to the nomination. Merge with this the fact that he is ranked as the most liberal Senator of the 100 and there are some real Lefties up there. The DemPols seem to habitually select to spearhead their party an empty, leftist, insubstantial, empty vessel. In the same way they picked John Kerry, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis. True validation of that came today when Jimmy Carter announced he was endorsing Obama. Carter, the empty cardigan, presided over our 22% interest rates, double digit inflation, a stagnant economy, the Iranian hostage debacle, the cause of our losing Iran as an ally and making that country our major problem in the Middle East, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, He has the title of the worst president in modern history; now we may have one who can vie for the title.

Posted by Jim at 08:53 AM | Permalink

Not everyone is concerned about Barack Hussein Obama’s far left credentials and lack of experience in any of the areas of which a president should have expertise such as national defense, economics, and foreign affairs.

We already knew that virtually all Blacks and the members of the liberal Obama Kool-Aid crowd are voting for Obama and don’t care, or more likely don’t know, what his positions are on the various issues. Now, I see that Al Jazeera Arab television has reported that the terrorist group Hamas has endorsed Obama and they aired a story about Palestinians in Gaza calling Americans at random to promote Obama for president. Ahmed Yousef, political adviser for Hamas, also announced that Hamas supports Obama. Everything about Obama, from his surprising lack of knowledge, to his questionable associations, to his wife’s anti-American statements, to the nature of his support people is disquieting. I understand that his campaign headquarters, staffed by a handful of young people, displays on the walls posters of Che Gueverra. The misguided group actually thinks Gueverra was a great revolutionary rather than the cruel, low-life terrorist who murdered hundreds of Cubans who opposed the Fidel Castro takeover.

Posted by Jim at 03:08 PM | Permalink

What is it with Democrat politicians? They can’t contain themselves from telling little lies to ingratiate themselves to their audience – lies that one can so easily check and, in today’s world of the Internet, someone will surely do.

They are generally lawyers to whom truth is relative, and, if they are long standing incumbents, they are accustomed to comfortably lying to the public whom they believe are too ignorant to question. Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin, a recent example, got carried away in a Memorial Day speech and said that he, wonderful patriot that he is, flew many combat missions over Viet Nam. This was similar to Hillary Clinton telling us gullible chumps how she was told to sit on her flak jacket as her airplane flew through anti-aircraft attack into Bosnia. Didn’t happen. A bald-faced lie that he should have known someone would check out. He didn’t fly combat aircraft, he flew a cargo airplane; so, what was his response? He allowed as how he didn’t fly fighters or bombers but did fly cargo over Viet Nam. Well, there he went again; his military record shows he never flew in Viet Nam at all.
Candidate Barack Hussein Obama has been doing his share of the “tell em anything, they won’t know the difference” philosophy, and, in the process, prove what a lightweight he is and how ignorant he is in American history for an aspiring president. In his Memorial Day Speech, he said his uncle was among the troops that liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp – the first such discovery by the allied forces. He said his uncle was so upset that “he came home, went up in the attic." The problem with this? Auschwitz was not liberated by U.S. troops but by those of the Soviet Union.

Posted by Jim at 07:54 AM | Permalink