OBAMAWORLD

One thing has become abundantly clear ... Obama has no idea what he is doing. For weeks, he failed to take any sort of leadership role on the increasing humanitarian crisis in Libya. Progressives will tell you that this was Obama's plan all along - that Obama wanted to hem and haw and hope that some other country or international organization stepped up to fill the void. This would take the pressure off the United States and wouldn't make it look like the evil hegemonic nation that is has come to be known as. This is what you get when you put an inexperienced, community organizing, Marxist-leaning hack in the White House and expect him to uphold the ideals of this nation. Janet Daley in the UK Telegraph says that this is a troubling direction for the US:

Obama's foreign policy is really perfectly consistent with the goals of his domestic policy. His object is to turn the US into a European-style social democracy complete with hugely expensive welfare provision and a federal healthcare programme: a country where security and universal provision of services is the first priority. What he was saying to Europe was: you have relied on our defence cover to spare yourselves the cost of military spending and that allowed you to lavish benefits and public services on your populations. It's our turn now. The great threat from Soviet power is gone, so we are going home to tend our own fire.

Also, the last-minute turn-on-a-dime decision making on Libya indicates that Barack Obama does not have a real strategy for handling world affairs. Why would he? He never had to have a strategy for balancing his own check book much less foreign policy. Instead, Barack Obama seems content to let the rest of the world do the dictating and only react when absolutely necessary. Is this what you call leadership? And one other question to consider from this McClatchy article: "While the Iraq war and the Libya crisis differ fundamentally in many ways, the question now, according to outside experts, is whether Obama's multilateral approach will turn out any better than Bush's unilateralism."

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REXTAL CRANIAL MOMENT OF THE DAY

As the majority leader in the Senate, who is Harry Reid concerned about? Is he worried about the children of his constituents, who will owe tens of thousands of dollars to pay for our great experiment in big government? Is he concerned about facilitating a friendly business environment in Nevada that will help to create jobs, which has a staggering unemployment rate of 14.7%? The answers to these questions is "no." Harry Reid is not concerned about any of these things. So back to my original question, "who is Harry Reid concerned about?"
Cowboy poets. Yup, podner ... cowboy poets. Yippie ki yo ki freakin' yay!
No folks, you can't make this stuff up. In a debate over Republican budget cuts, Harry Reid points out that the "mean-spirited bill" will eliminate the National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities. The horror! Can you imagine what would happen to all of the starving artists if they didn't have the government to subsidize their inability to sell their art in the private marketplace? So here's what Harry Reid had to say on the floor of the Senate:

"The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 ... eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist."

How out of synch is this man with the American public? Our nation hosts a staggering $14 trillion in debt and our leaders in Washington won't do a damned thing to make sure that number doesn't decline. Why? Because they have zero incentive to do so. Making tough cuts will only hurt their political chances of being re-elected to their position of power and prestige. This is because the looters and the moochers are holding them hostage. 

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CHARLEY SHEEN

In the entire Charlie Sheen saga that's been playing out over the past several weeks we really are seeing what is wrong with this country. Charlie Sheen is a drug-crazed drunk who is in the process of destroying his live while bringing down several around him. He deserves no more than a curious glance, yet he is basically the number one story in our media.
We have:

• Democrats and Republicans playing grabass with each other in Washington while refusing to launch any serious attack on our spending deficit and our national debt.
• A New York Congressman is under fire because he dares to hold hearings on the radicalization of Islamic youth in the United States.
• NPR executive Ron Shiller is caught on tape saying that the Republican Party believes basically in a white, Christian, gun-toting America ... all the while being paid in part by taxpayer dollars.
• Teacher's unions are fighting back at any public official who dares to question their power .. .and the head of one teacher's unions is saying that the solution to our education problems is to just let the teacher's unions handle the teachers and everyone else should just back off.
• Gas is costing $4.00 a gallon while The Community Organizer rejects any attempts to increase exploration for oil in our country and off our shores.
• The quality of American education continues to decline while we continue to spend more and more on the useless Department of Education
• We're getting more details on how Obama and his sycophants cooked the books on ObamaCare to convince us that his scheme would reduce our deficit. It won't. It will increase it.

I could go on with this list for pages ... but I have some interviews to do with some of my affiliates, but you get the point. There are things going on out there that will actually have some effect on your lives - not to mention the future of your children; but America is absorbed by the meltdown of a Hollywood slob that will have no effect on anyone outside of his rancid little circle.
They say that people generally get the type of government they deserve. Sure looks like that's true. 

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MAKING A MOCKERY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The United Nations is such a joke. Always has been ... still is. We are talking about an organization that exists for two principal purposes, weakening America and redistribution of wealth ... particularly America's wealth.
For 60 years we had an essentially useless body called the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. It eventually became so corrupt and lacking in credibility that it was dissolved in 2006. Do you remember when Sudan engaged in a program of ethnic cleansing in its Darfur region? That happened right after Sudan was placed on the Human Rights Council. That should give you an idea of why nobody took this commission seriously. One of the final anchors that sunk the U.N. Commission on Human Rights was nominating ... Libya! ... as the commission's president. So this defunct commission decided to regroup and "tighten" its criteria for membership to create the current Human Rights Council. I'm not entirely sure what criteria they used to elect members, but we have countries like Libya, Cuba, China and others that don't have the greatest track records when it comes to human rights sitting on this council to decide on human rights violations.
But then who are we kidding? This isn't really about human rights, is it? Now up until 2009, the United States refused to be a part of any of this Human Rights Council (we were kicked off of the last commission). But the great Community Organizer thought it would be a wise idea to reserve the Bush boycott and join the new Human Rights Council in 2009, saying the U.S. could most effectively push it to improve by being a member. Yeah ... right. So now we have a chance to test that theory.
So what is the Human Rights Council doing about the fact that one of its member nations, at the direction of a crazy dictator, is killing its citizens in cold blood? They've sent word to Quadaffi that "Killing your people is bad. Stop it. Stern letter to follow." Yup ... the Human Rights Council is going to call a special session to draft a letter. Wow, sounds pretty ruthless, eh? And fear not, my friends! Libya will get to keep its seat on the United Nations Human Right Council as there hasn't been one call for it to be kicked off the council.
Keep in mind that this is the same Human Rights Commission that Barack Obama submitted a report to about Arizona and its efforts to secure the border and enforce federal immigration policy on the state level.

GROUND HOG DAY....DO YOU KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM?

Stunning that we’re still actually required to go through this asinine “Groundhog” nonsense.  I know it’s just one day out of the year.  That’s one day too many.
In the great pantheon of idiotic activities, Groundhog Day has got to occupy a special space – somewhere between cow-tipping and state of the union addresses. And especially the Groundhog Day celebration as observed by the town that spawned the inanity, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

 If, like me, you’re looking for where to fix the blame, you have to go back to a group of European immigrants who brought some weird customs with them to the Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania area back in the 1800s…and, apparently, enough alcohol to inebriate everything from Punxsutawney to Pittsburgh. Yes, drink enough and you actually think that you can predict the end of winter weather by brutalizing a woodchuck.  Which they did.  And still do.
Believe it or not, each year 30,000 people have so little to do of any consequence, that they actually travel to Punxsutawney to freeze to death and watch a half dozen ‘drunk Punxsutawney town fathers in stovepipe hats weave their way onto a raised platform and drag a drug-addled marmot out of a crate to judge whether the thing is able to “see its shadow.”  The projected “remaining length of winter weather” is somehow based on the results of this exercise.  I know…lunatics.  Nevertheless, that’s the deal.
The administrators of Punxsutawney’s Groundhog Day observance would take exception to me suggesting that they’d stuffed a horse tranquilizer down their exploited animal’s throat before displaying it to the television cameras.  They deny, vehemently and indignantly, that the abused animal is in any way, well, “abused.”  The thing’s not drugged, they insist, to make it compliant nor is it banged over the head Sarah Palin “whack-the-halibut” style just before they yank it out of its cage.  That doesn’t square, though, with my admittedly “thin knowledge” of marmot behavior.  But if you Google the damn thing you get the idea that if somebody stuck their hand into the cage of a groundhog that had all its faculties they’d draw back a bloody stub.  In fact, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got a little lesson in marmot behavior when “Staten Island Chuck” – that’s New York’s rip-off of “Punxsutawney Phil” – took a chunk out of one of the mayor’s fingers in 2009.  Advice to City Hall:  Next time, “use the drugs.”
Anyway, a quick definition of Groundhog Day?  “A stultifyingly stupid event conducted for, and by, embarrassingly lame losers.” 
There are a couple of things I notice that have an annoying way of periodically recurring, and each is about as welcome as the other:  Groundhog Day – and herpes.  As far as I can see, the only meaningful difference between the two is that the latter doesn’t predict much…with the possible exception of having to compose a really challenging “personals ad.”

MOOCHERS AND THE GOVERNMENT

We are well on our way to becoming a majority moocher society. That is a society where the majority of people rely in some form on the government to survive. On the other side remains the shrinking pool of producers who will continue to be looted in order to support the moochers and their addictive government habit. If you are a producer, these numbers will be particularly hard for you to stomach:

In 2011, we will pay out $385 billion in food stamps, $365 billion for the federal portion of Medicaid (with an almost equal amount due from the states), $200 billion in unemployment benefits and over $100 billion in aid to education. The total cost of these payments will exceed $1 trillion, but the cost of administering these programs will add approximately $300 billion in expenditures to the federal budget.

The trend is only getting larger - the moochers are multiplying while the producers are dwindling, thanks to our asinine government that seeks to punish wealth and success. 

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UNIONS AND THE ECONOMY

While unions continue to dominate the news, I figured I would give you a few little facts I found from the Heritage Foundation. Take these facts, absorb them and continue to ask yourself .... are unions making a positive impact on our economy? I'll bet you can already answer that question. But here are some specifics to fill in the blanks.

• Unions function as labor cartels. A labor cartel restricts the number of workers in a company or industry to drive up the remaining workers' wages, just as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) attempts to cut the supply of oil to raise its price. Companies pass on those higher wages to consumers through higher prices, and often they also earn lower profits. Economic research finds that unions benefit their members but hurt consumers generally, and especially workers who are denied job opportunities.
   
• Economists consistently find that unions decrease the number of jobs available in the economy. The vast majority of manufacturing jobs lost over the past three decades have been among union members--non-union manufacturing employment has risen. Research also shows that widespread unionization delays recovery from economic downturns.
   
• Some unions win higher wages for their members, though many do not. But with these higher wages, unions bring less investment, fewer jobs, higher prices, and smaller 401(k) plans for everyone else. On balance, labor cartels harm the economy, and enacting policies designed to force workers into unions will only prolong the recession.
   
• Studies typically find that unionized companies earn profits between 10 percent and 15 percent lower than those of comparable non-union firms. Unlike the findings with respect to wage effects, the research shows unambiguously that unions directly cause lower profits. Profits drop at companies whose unions win certification elections but remain at normal levels for non-union firms. One recent study found that shareholder returns fall by 10 percent over two years at companies where unions win certification.
   
• In essence, unions "tax" investments that corporations make, redistributing part of the return from these investments to their members. This makes undertaking a new investment less worthwhile. Companies respond to the union tax in the same way they respond to government taxes on investment--by investing less. By cutting profits, unions also reduce the money that firms have available for new investments, so they also indirectly reduce investment.
   
• Research shows that unions directly cause firms to reduce their investments. In fact, investment drops sharply after unions organize a company. One study found that unionizing reduces capital investment by 30 percent--the same effect as a 33 percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate.
   
• Economists have found that unions delay economic recoveries. States with more union members took considerably longer than those with fewer union members to recover from the 1982 and 1991 recessions.

Now imagine if our government - state and federal - were forced to run like a business, without its unique ability to levy and collect taxes ...... me thinks our country would have gone Tango Uniform ages ago. 

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