A Comedian's Worst Nightmare?

I don't know about you but I'm sick of hearing how life has gotten so much tougher for comedians because Barack Obama was elected President.  You have Chris Rock, a black comedian calling Obama a comedian's worst nightmare. You have white comedians like Bill Maher crying in their beer, saying he's too perfect.

With all the pathetic hand wringing and gnashing of teeth, you would think someone had burned down Caroline's Comedy Club with Caroline in it.  Or someone had taken David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel hostage and were making them watch Conan O'Brien 24 hours a day.  Talk about a nightmare.

What will happen?  Where will the comedy come from?  Oh, the humanity!  Nancy Pelosi is now saying that nearly forty million comedians a month will lose their job if something isn't done.

Here's a tip for you guys: you're supposedly talented, use some talent.  If you're a talented comedian or a talented comedy writer, you can find comedy.  And it doesn't have to be the mean spirited, stupid stuff you guys always fall back on. Too many people had one Bush-is-dumb joke and thought that made them the next Mark Twain. The arrival of a president fluent in English should raise the bar.

You see, during Bush's administration, anyone, even talentless hacks, could do comedy. But now the poor comedians who have no talent will be out of a job if someone doesn't do something. I feel so sorry for them, and I'm sure President Obama does too--he's such a dear.

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Geithner to Unveil Bailout Plan for Financial Sector

A Treasury Department official says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will unveil the Obama administration's new plan to rescue the financial sector on Tuesday.

Geithner had been scheduled to announce the plan Monday.

Treasury spokesman Isaac Baker said Sunday that the administration wants to spend Monday focused on the Senate's effort to pass an economic recovery package.

The financial plan that Geithner is expected to detail Tuesday will spell out how the administration intends to fund further bailouts for failing financial institutions.  The plan is expected to include the following details:

* Democratic politicians and other party leaders will be forced to pay all back taxes, generating an estimated $175 Billion.

* Banks and other Financial institutions will use a special version of TurboTax called "Bailout TurboTax", which will save them an estimated $83 billion in taxes.

Other details to come.

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Why the Massive Spending Bill Will Fail

I was thinking this afternoon about the "Big Debate" over the Massive Spending Bill (which is what it should be officially known as). There are as many reason why this spending bill will fail as there are people arguing against it.  

I could point out the fact that most of the spending bill is spent in areas that will not stimulate the economy at all. I could point out that much of the spending will take place years down the road, not right away. I could point to the failed business practices of the automakers and financial institutions that are not going to change as a result of this bill.

However, the primary reason that this bill will fail has little to do with the bill itself, and more to do with a fundamental problem in the economy.

To understand my point, we must first understand how wealth is created. And to understand how wealth is created, we have to understand what wealth is and what it is not.

Contrary to the belief of many (most?) Americans, wealth is not money, it is stuff. We can print all the money we want, but we won't be any wealthier. The numbers on our bank accounts may be bigger, but that doesn't make us more wealthy. What makes us wealthy is the ability to accumulate stuff. To put it another way, wealth is our ability to live a higher standard of living.

Think about this: Five hundred years ago, the wealthiest kings and princes of Europe did not have air conditioning. They did not have TV or video games. They did not have telephones, wall-to-wall carpeting,  computers, cameras, wristwatches, stereo systems, toasters, motorcycles, or snow blowers. Most of the things we take for granted that make our life enjoyable were not in existence even as little as 75 or 100 years ago.  These things were manufactured. And our ability to own them is wealth.

How is wealth created?

We create wealth in three ways:  We can manufacture it; we can grow it; or we can mine it.  

When we build a house or a car or an electronic device or a piece of furniture, we are manufacturing wealth.  When we grow crops, we are growing wealth.  When we pump oil out of the ground or mine coal or mine for iron or other metals, we are creating wealth.

Now to the fundamental problem.  America is not creating wealth.

Not in sufficient quantities, anyway.  Most of our manufacturing has been moved to Mexico or Asia.  Due to government regulations, mining is becoming increasingly difficult.  Logging in America is declining because of regulation.  Generating energy is becoming more and more expensive, not because of a lack of coal or other forms of raw energy, but because of environmental regulation.  And while America's agriculture is more productive than at any time in history, relative to our population, our agricultural production is in decline.  Furthermore, much of what we produce spoils or is given away or sold to foreign markets at a price that is much less than it costs to produce.

Our current economic crisis has been a long time coming.  Really, beginning in about the 1960's, America's trade deficit has been heading in the wrong direction.  Every year, we have bought more and more from other nations and produced less and less here in America.  And every year, the Chinese, the Japanese and people from the Middle East, India and other nations have bought up American corporations, factories and American wealth.  A crash was inevitable. 

And it may be permanent.  

As long as unions prevent manufacturing companies from being competitive worldwide, and as long as government regulation prevents us from mining, logging and pumping wealth out of the ground, it will be impossible for America to create its own wealth.  In 2009, the only area in which America is out-producing other nations is in the area of information technology, and that is soon going to change.  Already, information technology is rapidly being outsourced to places like India, Malaysia and China.  Eventually, America will lose its lead in this area as well.

So no matter whether the coming Massive Spending BIll ends up being $1.3 trillion, $900 billion, or $750 billion, America is incapable of producing enough wealth to pay the bill.  

Until we address the fundamental problem of our inability to create wealth (in sufficient quantities to support our population), our current financial crisis will not be resolved.  And more government jobs isn't the first step.

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Uni-Partisan Agreement Reached On Stimulus Package

To the surprise of no one, the Democrats in congress have reached an agreement with themselves (mostly) that will allow them to pass the "Porkulus" spending package that they've wanted in order to make it look like they are doing something to help the economy.  

They've convinced two Republicans to go along with them; just enough to allow Obama to proclaim it a "Bi-Partisan" effort.  Senators Arlen Specter and Susan Collins, both regarded as "moderate to liberal Northeastern Republicans", are joining with the majority of Democrats in congress to see that "something" gets done. This, in spite of the fact that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that the package will do more harm to the economy than good. Specter and Collins are the best opposition that money can buy.

The agreement apparently cuts $110 Billion from the bill, making it a mere $880 Billion dollar package. The cost of the package will still manage to top a trillion dollars when interest is taken into account.  (Some even suggest as high as two trillion dollars).

President Obama, however, not being able to "stand the heat" headed off to Virginia for a retreat (read: "vacation"). Apparently, Obama wants to confirm Republican accusations of lack of leadership from the White House during the past few weeks.  There's nothing like taking a vacation two weeks after starting a job.  I'm sure most of us do that. Of course, Obama spent most of the week whining and complaining about Congress not getting his bill passed before he left.  

One reason Obama and the Democrats want a bill pass as soon as possible is because they are watching the polls and seeing that support by the American public for the package is slipping away by the hour. Every day the bill doesn't pass, they are losing somewhere between five and ten percent in the polls.  

As an aside, Sen. John Kerry took to the Senate floor today to pace, rant, and raise his voice in a monotone simulation of human passion as he spoke up for the massive spending bill the Democrats want to pass today under the guise of "stimulus." His argument against tax cuts for Americans during these hard economic times was illuminating:

"I've supported many tax cuts over the years, and there are tax cuts in this proposal. But a tax cut is non-targeted. If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there is no guarantee that they're going to invest that or invest it in America. They're free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest."

This, of course, is the fear of every good liberal. How dare Americans keep more of the money that they've earned and spend it like they want. It might not go to Planned Parenthood or ACORN. It might not be used to give condoms to kids or to teach homosexual tolerance. The American people might not want to spend their money supporting moms with seven kids living on welfare. They might even given some of it to (gasp) a religious organization or (even bigger gasp) a conservative cause or politician! We can't have that, can we, Senator Kerry. 

So, Congressmen like Senator Kerry place their own ideological desires over the rights and preferences of the American people. 

To make matters worse, Kerry showed a frightening indifference to the waste of taxpayer money by saying, "So frankly, you know, the difference between $50 billion on this bill or $100 billion -- let's get it moving. That is not going to make the difference in the economy."

I know that a $50 Billion difference isn't much to Senator Kerry, and I know that Speaker Pelosi doesn't know the difference between $50 Billion and a dollar and ninety five cents. Pelosi thinks $50 Billion is only a dollar or two for every working American, anyway. But to the rest of us average Americans, $50 Billion is getting close to being a lot of money.  

Kerry's priority is to get the stimulus package passed, not quibbling over a few hundred billion dollars here and a few hundred billion dollars there. Yet, if that's the case, you have to wonder why Kerry and his pals in congress couldn't bring themselves to support even one of the Republican amendments to the bill. For that matter, until today, it seems the Democrats in congress haven't even spoken to any of the Republicans about what it might take to make the bill more ... well ... bi-partisan.

For the Democrats in congress, the only time $50 billion to $100 Billion in tax dollars is worth worrying about is when taxpayers might have the dangerous freedom to spend it as they wish. When THEY are spending it, well, just don't worry your pretty little heads about it. 

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CHER: Republican Rule Almost "Killed" Her

Grammy award-winning singer and Academy award-winning actress Cher said recently that living under Republican rule almost “killed" her, and she does not understand why anyone would want to be a Republican. 

She also said that President Barack Obama’s “intelligence” and “spirit” are “so great” he will be able to do “more than anyone could possibly do.”

“His intelligence is so great and his spirit is so great, I believe he will be able to do as much if not more than anyone could possibly do,” Cher said at the “Declare Yourself” inaugural ball.

When asked to explain how Republicans somehow “killed” her, Cher was not specific.

Frankly, I suspect it was the drugs, the cosmetic surgeries and the STDs that have nearly done her in.  Cher has looked like death warmed over since the Carter Administration, so I doubt it has been Republicans.

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Good is evil; Evil is good.

For all its supposed condemnation and “outrage” of terror attacks, “world opinion” has given legitimacy to terrorism and barbarism. It does this whenever it draws “moral equivalence” between Taliban thugs and “freedom fighters”; it does this when world opinion fails to distinguish that in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, one side aches for peace; the other sues for total annihilation in order to have it. Instead of recognizing which nation is morally superior, appeasers and excuse-makers have only succeeded in defending terrorism and normalize the evil that human monsters do.

How is it that the so-called “peace movement” calls the United States “imperialist” and “the biggest terrorist”; and then cite (often over-inflated) Iraqi body count figures without distinguishing innocent civilians from insurgents? Who are the ones actually targeting civilians and government officials for murder? It’s not the U.S.

Why does Code Pink protest against our military rather than celebrate them for trying to stop terrorists from recruiting women suicide bombers by having women raped and the convincing them that martyrdom is the only way to escape shame?

The moral inversion of the anti-war movement is disgusting.

Sure, there are some empty rhetoric by liberals saying they’re outraged; but it doesn’t go without adding excuse-caveats about how “they’re just fighting for their freedom against imperialist occupiers”; “there wouldn’t be any suicide bombers if not for the illegal U.S. invasion of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11″.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn’t seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a “resistance” movement, together with honorary membership in PBS’s imaginary “cycle of violence.” In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that “each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man’s terrorism becomes another’s resistance to oppression.” He then stated — without blushing — that for readers of the Hebrew Bible “God-soaked violence became genetically coded.” The “cycle of violence” platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror’s victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas — the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains — to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, “Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza,” to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph — another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

The Bible says that the day will come when good will be called evil and evil will be called good.  That day is here.

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Another Tax Cheat Nominee

This is getting old.  How many is it now?  Four?

It seems yet another would-be member of the Obama administration accidentally forgot to pay taxes.   It was revealed today that the husband of Secretary of Labor nominee Rep. Hilda Solis had 15 outstanding state and county tax liens totaling $7,630 against his automobile  business, some of them dating back over 16 years.

White House Spokesman Robert  Gibbs had this to say:. 

"The White House believes that if you owe taxes you should pay them." Robert Gibbs

I certainly hope that they do.

The couple is claiming ignorance of the outstanding liens.  

While I have little specific knowledge of the tax lien process in California, this doesn't pass the smell test.  Liens aren't usually imposed until there have been a series of notices asking for payment.  In addition, in our age of computerization the existence of unpaid taxes often effects an owner's ability to keep the business completely legitimate. That's because city, county and state agencies now readily share information about the unpaid taxes and may refuse to renew many licenses and certifications until shown proof that all applicable taxes have been paid.

During the Obama campaign, he promised not to include lobbyists in his adminsitration.  (A promise which he broke, but that's beside the point, at the moment.)  What he didn't tell us was that he would make as a requirement that anyone in his administration MUST be a tax cheat.  All this is very ironic, given that all the rest of us simple folk are going to be stuck with mammoth tax bills for years to come because of the Obama Porkulus Spending Package.

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Obama May Become A Disaster

Here is an article everyone should read.  I'll copy the first paragraph and give you the link.  This was posted yesterday on American Thinker:

By James Lewis:

By their actions ye shall know them. By now we are seeing an ominous pattern of actions by the O administration. We know that President Obama is a very slick liar indeed, but then so was Bill Clinton. But Clinton had a smaller majority in Congress, and was forced to compromise after the Gingrich Congress was elected in 1994. It is still possible that Obama may turn toward the mainstream. But the early omens look dark.    (rest of the article)

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The Hope Hype

After hearing President Obama speak so eloquently about hope, I listened to the inaugural address wondering who had absconded with his hope.  I then took a glance at his op/ed piece yesterday in the Washington Post and found the President of “hope and change” beating the same “doom and gloom” drum that Democrats have used for years.  The phrase from the op/ed piece was that without this stimulus bill, the American economy might be irrecovably damaged; meaning that without this particular stimulus bill and this particular effort by the federal government, America will fall a part.

This kind of rhetoric annoys me.  It is not the federal government that has made America an exceptional nation.  It is the blood and sweat of hardworking, dedicated, honest Americans that have made this an exceptional nation.  Our rescue from the jaws of economic disaster will have little to do with President Obama, our elected officials and the trillions of dollars worth of useless bills they seem more than ready to print at the drop of a hat. 

Rescue from the jaws of the so-called impending economic disaster will come from the hearts and hands of the everyday bread makers and bread winners who will double down and roll with the financial punches so that the American (and subsequently the global) economy will again flourish.

President Obama would do well to encourage us to double down, roll with the punches and do what Americans have always done:  slap some old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity and elbow grease to the problems that ail our national economy.  

Instead, the new President has successfully convinced us that we are a weak and misguided people who have no real capacity to make it through times like these.   He continues to convince us - if not by his words, by the substance of his policies, that the federal government, and an increase of its powers and influence, are the only things that can pull the weak, poor, misguided American masses into a new age of enlightenment.

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September 10 is Back

ARTICLE FROM NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE:

Military Drops Cole Bombing Charges ... For Now and Possibly Forever   [Andy McCarthy]

Distressingly, there is more going on here than meets the eye.  Suffice it to say that the Defense Department's "appointing authority," which oversees all military commissions, has dismissed the charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the U.S.S. Cole bombing mastermind whose commission case I wrote about on Tuesday. 

I hate to say "I told you so," but I predicted this in Tuesday's article as one of the likely outcomes after the military judge in Nashiri's case, U.S. Army Col. James Pohl, foolishly rebuffed President Obama's reasonable request for a four-month adjournment while the new administration ponders whether military commission trials or some other option (like trials in the civilian justice) are the best way of dealing with terrorist war crimes.

This is worth recounting because there is another outcome that could very well be occasioned by Judge Pohl's folly.  As I also discussed Tuesday, it is entirely possible that

Obama will discover in Pohl’s grandstanding evidence for his own belief that terrorism cases belong in the civilian justice system, where they were before 9/11. That would be a lamentable outcome. The military commissions have not performed well, but the paradigm of detentions and prosecutions under the laws of war—whether administered by the military or by a new hybrid system with civilian judicial oversight—is essential to our security. 

If we go back to a September 10 way of doing things, under which only those who can be convicted under daunting civilian court standards may be detained, we will get September 11 results.

On that score, it is noteworthy that, before the appointing authority acted this evening, Obama had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow afternoon with victims and families of victims not only of the Cole bombing but of of the 9/11 attacks.  At a minimum, he appeared poised to announce he was dropping the Cole charges against Nashiri.  All evening, however, it has been floated from several knowledgeable sources that the president was prepared to announce the dismissal of all the commission cases — i.e., not only against Nashiri but against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters.  That suggestion is supported by the fact that the 9/11 families were invited to the White House meeting:  there would have been no need to invite them to discuss an announcement that impacted only the Cole case. 

Dismissals, if they happened, would surely be couched as "without prejudice."  That is, Obama would be able to tell the families — whether he meant it or not — that he could always re-file military commission charges if he ultimately decided that commissions, rather than civilian trials, were the best way to go.

The appointing authority's action tonight removes the pressure on Obama to do anything tomorrow.  (In truth, there was really no pressure on Obama to act tomorrow.  It just happens that tomorrow is Friday, the day when administrations traditionally announce news they'd prefer to see buried — even when the country is not already distracted by a catastrophic trillion dollar "stimulus" bill.)  Nevertheless, I would not be surprised to see the new administration go ahead and shut down all the commissions tomorrow.  It could then blame Col. Pohl for an action that involved far more than the case before Col. Pohl — which action it was going to take anyway. 

Such dismissals would get the administration out from under the four-month deadline its adjournment request would have imposed.  That is, the cases would be gone instead of suspended.  Nothing further would ever have to happen, and nothing further would happen, unless and until Obama decided what to do about all the detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay.  Maybe his ultimate decision would be to transfer the war-crimes detainees for trial in civilian court, maybe it would be to ship them to some country willing to take them, or maybe it would be to continue detaining them without trial under some new legal system.  But you could bet the ranch that war crimes defendants would never again be charged in military commissions.  Obama's antiwar base, which rejects the premise that we are at war, cannot abide such military prosecutions. 

September 10 America is back. 

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The End of an Era

Now that George W. Bush and the Republicans are out of power and Obama and the Dems are in power, we have witnessed an end to the era of scare-tactic politics.  Remember the Dems accusing President Bush and the Republicans of trying to scare Americans about everything?  Remember?

George W. Bush tried to scare us into a war on Terror.  He said that if we didn't go to war against al-Qaeda that they might attack us again.  They could actually kill people.  How dare Bush scare us like that.

Bush tried to scare us with the Patriot Act, as well.  As if there might be people right here in America that could try to harm people.  Shame on Bush.

And don't forget Gitmo.  Bush claimed that there might be some dangerous people there.  He refused to close it down in the face of criticism by scaring the American people into believing that it might actually contain some dangerous people.  

Aren't we all glad that that's all over with.  I'm glad the Dems and Obama have no intention of using scare tactics for political purposes.

... I guess that's all I have to say about that.

.... Oh, wait.  I also wanted to mention this:  We all need to get behind this stimulus package, because if it isn't passed, we will have the end of the world as we know it.  That's what Obama seems to be saying.  Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes. His message came as congressional leaders struggle to control the huge stimulus bill that's been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.

Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties.

Obama painted a bleak picture if lawmakers do nothing.

"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," Obama wrote in the newspaper piece titled, "The Action Americans Need."

He rejected the argument that more tax cuts are needed in the plan and that piecemeal measures would be sufficient, arguing that Americans made their intentions clear in the election.

"I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," he wrote.

I'm glad he's not trying the old scare tactics of Bush.  Fortunately we are now in an era of "Hope".

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Hope Brings Legal Trouble

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