Recognizing the unpopularity of the 2009 [stimulus] package, however, Democratic leaders have revised their message with less loaded language–“job creation” instead of “[CENSORED]” and “Make it in America” in lieu of “Recovery Act”–in hopes of tackling the jobs crisis. James Taranto/WSJ
The “[CENSORED]” word is stimulus. Do read the whole column. It’s very interesting and in fact, email it to friends and family. They need to read exactly what the Obama regime and his minions in Congress are trying to do to us, because we are obviously too stupid to really know what they are up to.
Just like it is no longer TAX, it’s now REVENUE, Pelosi and company have changed the words, to hide the meaning. Just change the word(ing) and they can pull the wool over our eyes.
Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed. Maureen Dowd
Many voters who supported him are no longer elated by the historic novelty of his candidacy and presidency. They hoped for a president who would be effective. Remember “Yes We Can”? Now many of his sharpest critics are his former supporters. Witness Bill Broyles, a one-time admirer who recently wrote in Newsweek that “Americans aren’t inspired by well-meaning weakness.” The president who first inspired with great speeches on red and blue America now seems to lack the ability to communicate any sense of resolve for a program, or any realization of the urgency of what might befall us. The teleprompter he almost always uses symbolizes and compounds his emotional distance from his audience.Mort Zuckerman/WSJ
The United States is still different [from European states]. In the wake of economic meltdown, the decadent youth of France rioted over the most modest of proposals to increase the retirement age. Elderly “students” in Britain attacked the heir to the throne’s car over footling attempts to constrain bloated, wasteful and pointless “university” costs. Everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria angry mobs besieged their parliaments demanding the same thing: Why didn’t you the government do more for me? America was the only nation in the developed world where millions of people took to the streets to tell the state: I can do just fine if you control-freak statists would shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill and your multitrillion dollar porkathons and just stay the hell out of my life and my pocket.
That’s the America that has a fighting chance – a nation that stands for economic dynamism, not the stagnant “managed capitalism” of France, for the freest, widest, rudest bruiting of ideas, not Canadian-style government regulation of approved opinion: for self-relience and the Second Amendment, not the security state in which Britons are second only to North Koreans in the number of times they’re photographed by government cameras in the course of going about their daily business. But when you hit the expressway to Declinistan there are few exit ramps. That America’s animating principles should require a defense at all is a melancholy reflection on how far we’ve already gone. Live free – or die from a thousand soothing caresses of nanny-state sirens.
Like I said, if you want a happy ending, it’s up to you.
Your call, America.
from After America: Get Ready for Armageddon by Mark Steyn
When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.
The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.
The exchange at the end of this clip, between Hank Rearden and his mooching brother, Philip is priceless. It was my first of several, laugh out loud moments in the movie:
I believe that it only came to light yesterday because it only occurred to the regime’s collective mind over the weekend, after Rep. Ryan released his plan. This brilliant idea isn’t in the actual ObamCare bill.
In his speech yesterday, which was a poor attempt to rebut Rep. Paul Ryan’s much touted Path to Prosperity, Obama disclosed a new plan to the American people:
Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board [IPAD – dontcha love these government acronyms?], all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won’t harm seniors’ care, even as the largest cohort of the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits. The Wall Street Journal
These are 15 UNELECTED “sages” who will be able to spend or not spend money, which up until now has been the job of Congress.
Let’s forego the obvious, that this is a stupid idea, and look at it as though it will really happen.
15 guys are appointed by the president to make these health decisions. When this president is gone, in 4 or 8 years and a new president comes in, a whole new bunch of wise men will be appointed. Where’s the continuity in that? We are dealing with human beings who are making subjective decisions. It’s like musical chairs. They leave and new guys come take their place and all things will change again with every new butt that sits down.
It’s ridiculous. And it can be dangerous to the citizens. Imagine the malevolent chair sitters that might be appointed – guys who really don’t revere the Constitution or our republic, like for instance some of the czar’s that Obama has already appointed.
Obviously, this regime could not have thought this through. These people are supposed to be smart then I and I can see how stupid and unworkable, not to mention unfair, this idea is.
Seriously. Think about this. If you can’t see how unworkable, subjective and just plain goofy this whole idea is, then I’m a Chinese astronaut.
As I posted yesterday, an additional 150 people are now unemployed in Las Vegas, primarily because charitable donations are down. Those wealthy individuals and corporations no longer have the tax breaks and just like the rest of us, they are feeling the hit of this horrible economy we are in.
The statist’s answer to our problems is to tax the rich MORE. But it should be now proven to every one that it has a devastating effect on the economy and the employment sector. When Boyd Gaming or Harrah’s stop donating a wing or a floor to institutions like Nevada Cancer Institute or Adleson Hospice, people start losing jobs and no one is being hired.
The wealthy are the job creators. Why is that so hard to understand? And how many more episodes like this one, nationwide, do the statists need to create before they get it? The less money the rich spend – or have to spend – the fewer cabbies, cooks and hotel housekeepers there are; the fewer nurses, back office people, lab techs and administrative assistants facilities like NCI employ.
What I find amazing is that the wealthy liberal left and right coasters – the elite, the ruling class, the academicians, the Hollywood “stars” – want more taxes on profitable (or once profitable) corporations, while at the same time, they are spending less and less money themselves.
This is why I believe that liberals suffer from mental illness: they keep doing the same things over and over, they keep doggedly following the same failed philosophy and never learn that it’s just NOT working.
I belong to the NIA email list and get updates from them regularly. Today I saw Beck mention this site on his show. I have posted videos from this site in the past, specifically MeltDown.
I kept wanting to stop and post at several points in this video until I heard the part about e-cigarettes. I had to stop it long enough to post.
I just bought these electronic cigarettes because we have a new baby coming into our home. Now, I understand from this video that the government is trying to make them illegal.
You want to make some extra money recycling your plastic and aluminum? They will take your picture and make you sign documents. Planning a garage sale? Permits are required and you very well might get fined.
This is the most appalling video I’ve seen in ages. It’s over an hour long, as you can see, but worth every minute of watching.
Much of this you already know or have already heard about, but it’s worth the watch. Gerald Celente of Trends Research is featured in this film. I’ve posted about him before.
Please watch, even if you have to watch it in parts. We should be very afraid.
“Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,” 31-year-old Faisal Shahzad told a federal judge. “Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow.”
Stop Sharia in America
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Obamas Wisdom and Terror in the Street
"We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever...we absorbed it and we are stronger."
Diary of a Mad Conservative 