To the surprise of nobody except the entire Obama adminstration, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded yesterday for the first time in history.
Standard & Poor's issued a harshly worded criticism of Washington politics, saying that our (ahem) leaders are "less stable, less effective, and less predictable" than at any time in the past. Moreover, after months of watching Barack Obama and Harry Reid swear to veto anything which actually reduced our debts, Standard & Poors opined that they don't think the current Washington establishment is likely to achieve more savings in the future. To put it mildly.
Barack Obama is already trying to pin the blame on others (including, especially, the American people) but it's hard to imagine how he can make it stick. During the two years the Democrats enjoyed a supermajority, they not only didn't address deficit-reduction, they completely ignored writing budgets and went on an astronomical spending spree.
Subsequently, Republican fiscal plans were offered which would have prevented the downgrade - including the Ryan plan, and "Cut, Cap, and Balance." But Obama and his happy little band of socialists made sure that those plans never had a chance to get voted on.
So Obama drove through a money-borrowing "deal" which added another $7 trillion to the deficit and guaranteed that our credit rating would get trashed...and then excused himself for two huge fundraisers in Chicago, and a gala Whitehouse birthday party where he lead drunken revelers in a conga line, and made rabbit ears above Stevie Wonder's head in official photographs.
Now the stock market is in the toilet, the United States is in dangerous and uncharted financial waters, and every dollar we borrow (and we borrow a LOT) is going to cost us more because our leaders have been proven irresponsible and untrustworthy. We have met the enemy...and it is the Obamaconomy.
So, Birthday Boy - how's that Hope and Changed credit rating working out for you...?
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You ought to not criticize the Dear President For Life like this. It may be bad for your health.
ReplyDeleteOf course they're irresponsible and untrustworthy, they are politicians after all.
Again I urge you to remember the three boxes of Liberty:
Jury Box --- Silenced by activist Judges
Soap Box --- Silenced by 'Free Speech Zones' and [soon] 'Net Neutrality'
Ballot Box --- Ineffective if you can get past the NBPP, lethal if you can't
Cartridge Box --- Time's acomin' which is why the ATF is desperate to have 'Fast and Furious covered up
We know that the Prez and his band of Socialist Thieves won't listen...But, maybe America will listen now. We have been preaching that this would happen if we didn't take a stand and hold to it. All those that voted for the "Lie Plan" in the Senate had better pay attention...both sides stand to lose and lose big in 2012...many of us conservatives are just flat fed up with the crap.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrat's hopes are pinned on the power of their fluffers in the media to control the narrative and "guide" the electorate through the maelstrom of hidden truth to the calm waters of denial and obfuscation. Really, what else do they have?
ReplyDeleteFUNNY! So funny I might have to risk posting it on my FB page.... hahaha....great one today!
ReplyDeletesure glad it happened on HIS watch..not a bit surprised
ReplyDeleteI warned my friends and family, they laughed. Now I say, sadly, "told you so." Some still cling to the idea that we'll "stimulate" & "tax" us out of this yet. And I warn again: "can't work; never has." And they laugh. But the laugh is less hearty than it was. There's cracks in the "Obama is wonderful & does no wrong" bit, for sure. And if the Republicans take some of the blame, well, good -- they should (And they should certainly stop worrying about gay folks, that's for sure; who's got the time to keep playing the "gay card" as adept as the president's "race" card?) We got a crisis here.
ReplyDeleteStill, for decades everyone with a brain said it was going to happen. Even Obama himself, brainless and duplicitous he may be, knew that it couldn't last -- which is why he ran on the "Bush's deficits are too big, I'll run a surplus!" platform. And lo, he has, in a perverse way -- a surplus of debt.
Well, no where to go, but up, one hopes. Or a little down some more, to really drive the point home.
As bad as things are, I remember that we made it through the (hot) civil war so I know we'll make it through this, because THIS is NOTHING compared to THAT. Having read extensively on the subject, I do not think that at base the People are much different now, as compared to then. Still, as I have said before, even a little revolution is a very ugly thing. And it's just about time that we HAD one!
ReplyDelete@Doctor Paulie - my thoughts exactly!
ReplyDeleteHowever ... it's, "a riot is an ugly thing".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5pmDgWMaU
But my favorite scene has to be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9K9wiH2Lko&feature=related
@Chuck, riots, revolutions.... whatever it takes, friend.
ReplyDelete"It's not Frahkenshteen. It's Frankenstein!!"
Dear Friends, for those of you puzzled by the above exchange, please see the movie "Young Frankenstein". It has several off-color moments, so be forewarned, but it has quite a few memorable scenes, and a line or two worth remembering.
ReplyDelete"What hump?"
Well, to be fair Stilton, the American people are responsible. Or, at least the 50% or so who (think they) pay little to no taxes, but consistently vote for the kleptocrats who they honestly believe will seize from the producers and direct towards their direct benefit.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, "greed" did it. No, not the kind of greed that liberals typically attribute to hard-working capitalists, but the kind belonging to ordinary citizens who believe it's the government's place to re-direct the nation's wealth to their personal "wants".
I've been on this tirade for around 30 years now. I wonder how many of those people who thought I was over-the-edge are now thinking, "Hey, he was right!"?
@John the Econ, for the record, you are absolutely right. I still think enough of the People are capable of behaving rationally, if hit between the eyes haed enough, that the truth, facts, logic, and plain common sense will prevail in the end.
ReplyDeleteHope you're correct Doktor Paulie, but I've seen posts on facebook by ex-military from the gulf war being politically correctly tolerant and wishing this Sleeper-in-chief a happy birthday: even as O sends military into harm's way with rules of engagement tilted wildly in the favor of the enemy forces. I'd have thought that would be enough two-by-four for armed forces folks, but it hasn't been, on the face of it.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could figure out a more effective two-by-four level argument to present to some folks who are going to be mightily shocked unless they awaken soonest.
Has anyone run across a page with a fairly succinct set of points to bring up to acquaintances when they make comments like.."why don't they just vote for anything and fix it later..geez i'm so tired of this stuff in the news" ?
ReplyDeleteI'd appreciate being pointed to anything that will help formulate a reasoned response I could present, thanks!
@mouse: I think events yet to come will take care of that two by four all by themselves.
ReplyDeleteI don't know of a succinct page of points, but if you read this blog regularly, plus Ann Coulter, Thomas Sowell, and Laura Ingraham, all of whose links you can find on The Drudge Report page, you'll be able to hold your own. A trick I learned from Abraham Lincoln: rfead their columns out loud, slowly. Helps the comprehension and retention.
Note that most of the lefties will NOT hold still for a string of points anyway. All you need is one good one that you keep pounding them with, don't let them bait you away from it or dodge it or scare you off it with feigned outrage. Just settle on one every few days, make a note on a 3x5 if you need to, then hit them with it as the occassion presents. Don't worry about being smooth, just keep repeating the single simple truth like a broken record. After a little practice, they'll learn not to mess with you. Oh, and OF COURSE they'll be offended! Anytime someone tells them the truth they're offended. To them, there is no obscenity so foul as the truth. Tell them anyway.
@Readers- I've been out of pocket today, but you've handled things fine without me!
ReplyDelete@Doktor Paulie: Good stuff! Thanks very much for the information and the good advice on how to use it to best effect!
ReplyDeleteCheers, off to bookmark 'em!
@SJ - You'll be pleased to learn that I have now been called "racist" for posting one of your cartoons on a liberal acquaintance's Facebook page. As we all know, the Race Card is what liberals pull out when they know they don't have an argument. I feel great!
ReplyDeleteSuperb humor here
ReplyDeleteLinked at RR
Reaganite's Sunday Funnies
Enjoy your weekend, sir
@Doktor Paulie, the problem is that these liberals are thinking rationally. They know perfectly well that they've effectively tapped the ballot box as a mechanism to seize the labor and property of the net-producers of America to be redirected to their benefit.
ReplyDeleteExactly how do you convince those who's entire economic existence is based upon government largesse and handouts ("community organizers", welfare queens, crony capitalists, superfluous and payed well beyond market rate government employees, etc) that what they are behaving "irrationally"? The "hit between the eyes" is only the alternative that they'd have to do something economically worthwhile to society for a change. Who'd freely choose that?
@John the Econ: here's a good e.g. that I've punded a few lefties with lately:
ReplyDeleteAccording to William Simon's book "A Time for Truth" (Simon was Treasury Secretary under Ford and I think maybe Nixon for awhile) the US gov't spent $30000 a year on every poor person in the US forthe first ten years of "The Great Society" from 1966 to 1976. That's the total budgets of the two big anti-poverty bureaucracies, HEW and HUD as they were called at the time, created to end poverty as we know it. (And I guess they DID, didn't they?) So if you were a poor family of 5, you should have received a check from the gov for $150000 every single year for ten years. It would be considerably more now, with inflation and the usual bureaucratic bloat inflating the budgets.
If they only knew about it, I'll bet there would be a lot of poor people wondering where their money went.
Simon gives list in his book of all HEW and HUD programs. There's about a half page of programs that at least SOUND like they might fight poverty, and about two pages that certainly sound like gov't pork.
I close my little recitation of the facts by noting that "the poor" would have been considerably better off if the gov't had simply written them a check for their share of the total, rather than withe the bogus "programs" actually established.
The liberals I talk to about this are not, themselves, on welfare, they are hard-working professionals of one sort or another. With this and other similar arguments I have not persuaded any of them, but I have put a few cracks in their world. I think most of them likely will stay home rather than vote for BO in 2012, and I am assured that I helped with that.
That's my own goal, anyway: here a little there a little, drop by drop, you win some you lose some, you wear them and crack them and erode them. Sometimes a big chunk falls off their smug little world.
As for the welfare queens and etc, there are a vast number of them, but there are also many who for themselves or for their children do not wish to continue in that life, in those neighborhoods. They want vouchers so they can send their kids to good and useful schools and charter schools to replace failing ones. They are stymied by the education bureaucracies and unions and the politicians who get their power from them. As Eldridge Cleaver said, "They've hooked us on their welfare dope and they don't want to let us go." But more-and-more are getting disillusioned with it.
I'm not even scratching the surface. For a good examination of the problem, start with Thomas Chatterton's book "Losing My Cool".
Here endeth this 'way long post.
In re-reading my last, I think I wasn't as clear as I'd hoped. One last attempt and then I promise to quit boring everyone.
ReplyDeleteI think that between coming economic events that will dry up the money for all the welfare goodies, a growing number of people in the black and hispanic communities who are waking up to reality, and the vast army of informed and aroused conservatives who are out there everyday assaulting the clueless "moderates" and the smug "liberals" with the truth (thus continually winning more and more of them over to the truth), we have an excellent chance of pulling off our ugly little revolution at the polls.
It will take some time and it will likely be very ugly and we will certainly win some and lose some. But the remarkable thing about the truth is that it eventually wins out.
@Anonymous (five above)- Sorry you've been labeled a racist, but seriously - haven't we all been labeled racists by now? And I didn't throw the "race card" angle into the cartoon for no reason; Obama not-so-subtly tried to inject race into the budget argument when he said Democrats and Republicans should come together to resolve our financial challenges the same way they previously did to end slavery in America. Sheesh.
ReplyDeletePlus, part of the point of the cartoon is that the race card has always been a very effective political tool domestically... but it's a card that "is not accepted" when trying to deal with actual finances and other countries.
As far as your "friends" who now see you as racist, ask how many of them would vote for Herman Cain or Allen West? Ask if they enjoy the writings of Thomas Sowell? Ask them why liberals insist on trapping black kids in horrible schools rather than letting them get the vouchers their parents so desperately want (ask them to watch the recent documentary "The Lottery")?
And finally, tell them that you're half-black and always hid it from them because you knew they were insensitive. Hey, it's worth a shot.
@John the Econ- "Who'd freely choose that?" is the trillion-dollar question. Here's a thought experiment: what if we had a general election in which there was only one question on the ballot: "Are you in favor of a law which will give you $100,000 today, but will disband the United States of America in 20 years?"
I think the results wouldn't be to our liking. Because that's basically the crux of elections right now.
@Doktor Paulie- Great post! And congratulations on doing the hard work of eroding the dream worlds of liberals. They're filled with sincere good intentions, but the easiest question to ask them (and the hardest for them to answer) is "which of your programs is working?"
And the quote from Eldrige Cleaver is great. Make no mistake, it is only the liberals who believe that welfare slavery is the natural state of black citizens, but is tolerable if there are "good massa's" giving them compassionate oversight.
The concept sickens me...and it's why the accusation of racism against conservatives is so Kafka-esque.
And per your postscript message (which you posted while I was writing this), I think you may be right - while forced budget cuts will unquestionably cause some real hardships, the "unintended consequence" may be millions of people waking up to the fact that they've been wearing Washington's economic shackles in a world in which they could have been - and will be - free.
@SJ:LOVE your "best question", above. Can't wait to use it! Lefties will inevitably attempt to say that we just need to throw a few 10's of trillions of dollars down the same old liberal ratholes and eventually the programs will start to work, but with no evidence whatsoever that any of their programs has made things better than they were before, mocking laughter and a comment that "the check is in the mail and other great lies" will serve as a fitting rejoinder.
ReplyDeleteLaughter, by the way, is a terrific weapon in our arsenal. As Thomas More said, "The devil...the prowde spirite... cannot endure to be mocked." I'm quoting him from the frontspiece to C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters". A marvelous little book that will reveal much of the program of the Left. At any rate, Liberals demand to be taken seriously and cannot abide a little quiet scorn.
She Who Must Be Obeyed summons me!
Friends, all that's really necessary is that each of us does whatever we can with whatever we have whenever we can. By such actions, we will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
ReplyDelete@Doktor Paulie, you and I know "the poor" would be better off without Federal help. But "the poor" will never accept that. That's why they're poor in the first place. If you're poor and ignorant, it's simply too easy to believe that socialist benefactors seizing the labor and property of net-producers is the fast track to a better life than working for yourself.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the greatest (and perhaps ultimate) failure of conservatives is allowing this intellectual and spiritual malaise propagate for generations amongst the now permanent class of dependents of this country. Very few "poor" people read, much less read tyhe kind of material you suggest. Instead, the government produces de-facto comic books for them extolling the virtues of the nanny state that they've become permanently dependent upon. Other than cutting them off, there is no way to save them.
And I seriously doubt that the economic resources for the welfare state will "dry up" first, like you suggest. What I think will happen is what has happened in Europe, where we'll give up on our military and global economic leadership first. This is because we're a supposed "democracy", and these people, a near majority now, will vote to give up everything except their benefits. Their day of comeuppance will not happen until the whole of society collapses.
@John the Econ- I wish you weren't right, but I deeply believe you are.
ReplyDelete