The First Shot is Fired

Congratulations to Scott Brown for his electoral defeat of Martha Coakley in yesterday's special Massachusetts Senate election.

He ran on what was essentially a national platform, which was aimed squarely at all things Obama, and yet still managed to win the seat many had been referring to as "Ted Kennedy's."

At the end of the day, it wasn't "the swimmer's" seat after all.

Just don't tell Eleanor Clift that, else she might just have a stroke.

What took place in Massachusetts yesterday gives me a glimmer of hope for the future of our republic, but we are still many, many miles away from preserving it intact for our young.

Scott Brown's victory may have been merely a BB shot across the bow of the SS Obama.

Let us all hope that this coming November the heavy artillery comes out.

Hey Congress, how about reading the Constitution?

I have long felt our (imperial?) federal government is out of control. It has become too big, too unwieldy, overly complex and completely unresponsive to the very people it is supposed to serve. Just take a look at the hideous federal tax code - all 44,000+ pages of it.

As such, I was not all that surprised when certain congressional elected representatives recently admitted to not having read many of the bills they have actually voted on, or that are currently floating (clunking?) around the halls of congress. While this revelation angered many, including me, I can at least understand, in part, why this is: The damn things are just too long and incomprehensible.

Gene Healy feels similarly, and has hit on something that could actually make a difference (emphasis mine):

You can live in this town for years and still occasionally find yourself gobsmacked by what counts as "normal" by Washington standards. Take the ongoing debate over whether it's fair for us to expect our elected representatives to read the laws they pass and expect us to follow.

Recently, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-DE, and Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, scoffed at the idea that they should read the health care legislation working its way through Congress (hey, it's only a matter of life and death). That attitude has inspired the "Read to Vote" campaign--designed to get congressmen to pledge to "read every word of every bill before casting my vote."

Read to Vote's efforts earned them a condescending Washington Post editorial last month, complaining that their proposal "would bring government to a standstill." (Heaven forbid.) "To read all 1,427 pages of Waxman-Markey," the Post fretted, "it would take at least 12 hours -- tough on a tight legislative timeline."

[...]

In February 2003, the New York Times reported that both parties had hired lawyers to run seminars for congressmen, explaining the requirements of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law they had just passed. "I didn't realize what all was in it," said Rep. Robert Matsui (D.-CA); "A real education process," echoed Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R.-NY).

[...]

A better idea can be found in a resolution recently introduced by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-KY, requiring all new legislation to be posted online for 72 hours before consideration. That could put the distributed intelligence of the web to work, ferreting out the many devils in the details of proposed laws.

[...]

Read the bills? It's more important for congressmen to read the Constitution. They'll be pleased to learn that it's short and written in plain English.

You will find Gene Healy's entire Washington Examiner column here.

Perhaps if those charged with representing us in D.C. would take the time to read our nation's founding document and actually heed it's limitations on the powers of government our founder's placed therein, just maybe those hideous and over-sized bills would cut themselves down to size.

I won't hold my breath waiting.

$4 Billion Bailout for the Postal Service?

Via David Rogers at Politico (emphasis mine):

The House voted Thursday to freeze Medicare Part B premiums for most elderly next year, even as Democrats moved to exempt the Postal Service from having to make $4 billion in payments due next week to cover retirement health benefits for its employees.

[...]

At a meeting of House and Senate Appropriations Committee negotiators Thursday morning, the Postal Service language was incorporated into a stop-gap continuing resolution, or CR, that Congress must enact in the next week to keep the full government operations. As adopted, the postal agency, which now faces a liability of $5.4 billion due Sept. 30, would have to pay only $1.4 billion and would be allowed to effectively defer the remaining $4 billion until after 2017.

Will their even be a Postal Service by 2017? I have my doubts here.

“That’s good news” said a Postal Service spokesman, who argued the arrangement posed no risk for the taxpayer since the retirement fund holds $32 billion at this time. Nonetheless, critics argued the $4 billion will now be added as a potential cost on the government’s books given the fragile state of the Postal Service, and the whole handling of the issue is seen by many as a parliamentary sleight-of-hand.

Republicans made no effort to target the postal provision but complained it had been added without warning to the otherwise non-controversial 30 day resolution. Moreover, to doubly protect their work product, the Democratic leadership for the Appropriations Committees has wrapped it into an otherwise non-controversial $4.65 billion budget bill covering the operations of the Capitol and such agencies as the Library of Congress.

[...]

Ranking Republican, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, countered that the whole strategy was “one of the most cynical legislative maneuvers I’ve ever seen.” And Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) said Democrats made matters worse by wrapping the spending provision into the legislative appropriations bill –taking care of Congress’s “backyard” and doing little for the rest of the nation.

You can read the entire article here.

My question is, where are they going to get $4 billion? We're effectively broke.

I think it's time to cut the USPS loose and let it sink or swim on its own. Seriously, given the advent of faxing, email and texting, do we even need a Postal Service anymore, especially one that is going to pick our pockets every time it gets in over its financial head?

Maybe people attending the next Tea Party in D.C. will show up with the pitchforks and torches, as that appears to be our only option to finally put a stop to this endless fiscal insanity.

If this lunacy continues unchecked, and it appears it will, by November of 2010 we are going to be in dire straits as a nation.

Even more dire than we are already.

(h/t: Boortz.com)

From the No Sh*t, Sherlock File:

IG: Taxpayers May Lose Money on Bailouts

Thursday, September 24, 2009 1:21 PM

By: Dan Weil

Taxpayers may lose money on the $700 billion bailout engineered by the Treasury Department of the Bush and Obama administrations.

So says Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the bailout, formally known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

In testimony prepared for the Senate Banking Committee Thursday, Barofsky says the Treasury Department has ignored suggestions to improve the program’s transparency. And he says Treasury has never solved the vexing problem of disposing with the toxic assets that remain on banks' balance sheets.

"While several TARP recipients have repaid funds for what has widely been reported as a 17 percent profit, it is extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment," Barofsky said in the remarks, as cited by The Wall Street Journal.

The Treasury’s attempt to use government aid to spark bank loans hasn’t worked, he says. Lending has actually dropped, despite the government’s injection of billions of dollars into the banking system.

To be sure, he acknowledges that lending would have plunged even more precipitously if the TARP program hadn’t been enacted.

Barofsky has clashed repeatedly with the Treasury over the program’s transparency.

"TARP largely remains a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested," Barofsky said.

While U.S. taxpayers may not make out so well in the financial buyout, some other investors have profited handsomely. Warren Buffett, for instance, has earned paper profit of $3 billion, or 60 percent, on the $5 billion investment he made in Goldman Sachs a year ago.

And Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC) announced this week that it gained a $1.6 billion profit by selling about half of its holdings in Citigroup.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

-End

I have long felt that TARP was nothing less than an illegal treasury raid cooked up by Paulson & Co. for the express purpose of helping out their Wall Street buddies. I never bought into the notion that our financial system was on the verge of imminent collapse.

I hope to see an investigation someday into where our money went, who got it, and what it was used for, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

Personally, I think TARP is the largest and most egregious scam ever pulled off.

Inhofe Calls a Spade a Spade

As one who believes this nation is currently swirling much closer to the bottom of the loo (that's British for toilet) than most of my fellow citizens appear to realize, it is nice to hear from an elected representative that is actually plugged in to what is really going on in D.C. right now, as it goes far beyond just the attempt on the part of the Obama cabal to pull off a federal government seizure of our nation's health care system.

Myself, along with many others, took the time to study up on Barack Hussein Obama back when he first announced his intention to run for the highest office in the land. Needless to say, we did not like what we found. This man, who few outside the city of Chicago had even heard of  four years ago, had a list of family members, friends and associates that could have been lifted from the pocket of Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Nowhere could we find anybody in his life that had any love for freedom and liberty, two words that have eluded use by our now 44th POTUS since he began campaigning for the office.

Obama ran on a platform of "hope" and "change," while promising to "transform" America. My question was always, "What does a person who has spent his entire life being influenced by Marxists and communists going to transform a nation into?"

Well, it sure as Hell wasn't going to be a bastion of freedom and liberty, now was it?

Today, nearly nine months into what I believe is essentially a Marxist coup (blitzkrieg?) being carried out against our country, a very clear picture of these people's true intentions is becoming crystal clear. Many of my conservative friends appear to still want to believe that the Obama administration is simply trying to turn us into another Canada or France. Wrong! We are being rapidly transformed into Cuba.

America's private sector economy is being dismantled with alarming speed, and its wealth is being systematically destroyed. Companies large and small are hemorrhaging jobs, or closing their doors. The federal government is moving in on many areas of the private sector economy they have no business, nor any constitutional basis for, being involved in.

It pains me to see that, even nine months into this lunacy, there are still members of the Republican Party who seem intent on aiding these hideous people in their efforts to "re-make" America. At least Sen. Jim Inhofe is not among them, who had this to say at a town hall that took place in Grove, Oklahoma on Wednesday:

“I never dreamed I would see an administration try to disavow all the things that have made this country different from all others,” Inhofe told more than 300 people at a town hall meeting in the Grove Community Center.

“I have never seen so many things happening at one time so disheartening to America.” Inhofe found a highly receptive audience. Many wore T-shirts of a local organization called Get America Back. Its Web site promises “a plan to eliminate the socialist government and return Americas (sic) freedoms.”

Neither did I, Senator. But here is the money quote:

“Those of you who think like I do,” Inhofe said, “hope this country can hang on another 16 months.”

Honestly, given the alarming speed at which things have been unfolding in this country over the last nine months, I am truly beginning to wonder if there will be enough of the America I grew up in left to save by November of 2010. What is happening isn't surprising to me in any way, but the pace of it all has shocked me to my core.

You will find the entire TulsaWorld.com article here.

David Brooks Hits One Right Over the Fence

I am not a huge fan of David Brooks, as I consider him to be the editorial version of John McCain, the head RINO of my former political party. However, every so often he gets it right, as he has with this NYT column published yesterday:

It’s not that interesting to watch the Democrats lose touch with America. That’s because the plotline is exactly the same. The party is led by insular liberals from big cities and the coasts, who neither understand nor sympathize with moderates. They have their own cherry-picking pollsters, their own media and activist cocoon, their own plans to lavishly spend borrowed money to buy votes.

This ideological overreach won’t be any more successful than the last one. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday confirms what other polls have found. Most Americans love Barack Obama personally, but support for Democratic policies is already sliding fast.

You will find his entire NYT column here.

It is well worth a read.

Loading Your Own May Soon Be Verboten

Yep, our Imperial Federal Government is at it again, trying new and ever more inventive ways to interfere with the 2nd Amendment rights of us law-abiding Americans.

Apparently President Obama is interested in reviving the "INTER-AMERICAN CONVENTION AGAINST THE ILLICIT MANUFACTURING OF AND TRAFFICKING IN FIREARMS, AMMUNITION, EXPLOSIVES, AND OTHER RELATED MATERIALS" treaty, which was signed by Bill Clinton during his presidency, but was never ratified by the Senate.

Should this treaty be put into place, you could very well be required to have a government issued license to load your own ammo.

What is even worse, it would allow Obama to by-pass congress completely and impose any restrictions on gun owners that he wishes.

Bob Unruh has a complete write up on this at WorldNetDaily, which you can read here.

Why is it I see another one of those middle-of-the-night Senate votes coming up?

Boortz Explains It All

If you are currently reeling from the events that have rapidly transpired since the November election through today's vote by the United States Senate to pass a hideous government-expansion bill, which in my humble estimation will ultimately mean the end of America as we know and love it, you are not alone.

The freedom-hating socialists have wasted no time in their effort to finalize their control over the federal government, and more specifically, our lives as Americans.

I found the following list over at Boortz.com a little earlier, in which Neal has given a brief run down of the major events since last November that have brought us to where we are today, which is to say, a very sorry place in our nation's history:

1. Obama, the first YouTube, People Magazine, American Idol, Entertainment Tonight president is elected by a celebrity-worshiping mob.
2. Rahm Emanuel tells the PEBO that there's an economic crisis and reminds him that it is a political crime to let a good crisis go to waste. Let's get busy and take advantage of this mess.
3. Obama wants to get off on the right foot with Congress, so he makes a call to Nancy Pelosi and tells her to come up with an economic stimulus bill and to let it all out because this is the era of anything goes. There's a crisis to be taken advantage of here.
4. Pelosi spreads the word to the House Democrat Caucus: "The new president has given us a green light. Get me a list of all of the spending dreams and schemes you've had over the last decade by noon Thursday. You snooze, you lose.
5. A Texas Congressman comes up with a true economic stimulus plan; a tax holiday. Just suspend the collection of all personal federal income taxes and payroll taxes for five months. Let the people who earned the money spend it. Democrats aren't interested in this plan because it does not enhance their power, and they don't particularly like the idea of people knowing how much they actually make.
6. Pelosi and her flying monkeys assemble the Democrat spending dreams into one 700+ page $800 billion monstrosity that not one member of the congress will ever read and presents it to the nation as an "economic stimulus bill."
7. Obama tells the nation that we face economic catastrophe and the possible destruction of our country if Pelosi's government-expansion bill isn't passed. The sky is falling. We're doomed!
8. People show up at Obama rallies in Elkhart, Indiana and Ft. Myers, Florida thinking that Obama is going to be handing out checks and jobs.
9. Three Republican Senators, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter surprise not one single person in the free world by climbing all over each other to sign on with the Democrats ... again ... in support of the bill.
10. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office issues a report which essentially says that the so-called "stimulus plan" is a fraud and will not work. Nobody listens.
11. The mainstream media generally ignores the CBO report because their investment in Obama is so overwhelming that they simply cannot allow him to fail. Their credibility is at stake.
12. Our children and grandchildren are saddled with a debt and future inflation that will insure a standard of living for them that will never match the standard their parents enjoyed.
13. So many people are removed from the federal tax roles by Obama's phony "tax cuts," (which are really government handouts) that Democrats are confident that they'll remain in power for ever more.
14. The enemies of America throw a party.
15. Those who love America hold a wake.

-End

Sadly, I believe we are in for a very bad time as a nation. Far too many government-schooled Americans today actually believe what they were taught in those schools, and that is that FDR literally spent us out of the Great Depression.

It appears that many Americans are destined to discover, the hard way, that that was not actually what happened.

Not even close.

May God help the United States of America.

Congratulations to the House Republicans!

It appears that the Republican Party members residing in the House of Representatives have found what once appeared to be lost forever-their spines. Amazingly, they fought off what must have been some very heavy pressure from the Obama people, the media, and probably some folks back home, and unanimously voted against the passage of HR1, the most expensive, pork-laden, nonsensical vote-buying spending bill to ever be introduced anywhere. Ever.

While they clearly lacked the necessary number of votes to prevent the passage of this hideous monstrosity, I believe they at least were able to send the message to the White House that Obama's heretofore seemingly magical tiptoe-through-the-tulips was destined to be a short trip. Let us hope he didn't stub his toe.

Now the bill moves over to the Senate to try its luck there. Hopefully the Senate Republicans have taken notice of what their House colleagues did yesterday, and unanimously vote against this nonsense as well.

I urge you to begin emailing and calling your respective senators now, and not waiting until next week. We need to put their feet to the fire, and hold it there until they squirm.

We were able to kill Scamnesty, and we can kill Porkzilla, too.