Government

Both Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Holder have argued that the US must further restrict guns to help Mexico’s fight against drug cartels. Here’s Holder:

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to re-institute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder said. "I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum."

Holder said reinstating the ban would decrease the flow of guns from the U.S. into Mexico.

And Hillary:

I’ve dreamed of starting a car company. Around the turn of the millenium I needed a new ride, and wasn’t pleased with what my modest wealth would afford. For my budgeted $15K, I could choose something nicer than a pure econobox, but only the base model. Or I could pick the econobox in the highest trim level—chrome on a pig. I was looking for something in between. An efficient and reliable car, that could carry three friends around town, with a few luxury features like cruise control and a moon roof. Nobody offered one.

The Keystone Kongress has sneaked another one past President Klink. Two days after Barry made headlines by reversing the previous administration’s restriction on embryonic stem cell funding, he unwittingly reversed himself:

Libertarians may be getting a version of the smaller government they desire. Barry has failed to fill 94 percent of the top spots in his administration:

In repsonse to tough times, Congress is stimulating itself:

We all need to sacrifice.
Well, everyone but those lucky enough to be a member of the Pelosi-Reid Congress.

They gave themselves a raise last month.
They now make $174,000 a year for their 3 day work week.

Investment guru and entertaining TV hothead Jim Cramer appears to have joined Rush Limbaugh on the Failed Obama Administration™’s enemies list. Cramer, on his Monday show, told viewers that Barry’s budget, “is the most, greatest wealth destruction I’ve seen by a president.”

Last Tuesday I listened to the current President fog his way through a non-State-of-the-Union speech. At this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, an opposing blowhard orator had the podium. In the interest of fairness and balance, I would like to hear how these words were delivered:

I want everyone in this room and every one of you around the country to succeed. I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed.

Sounds like change I can believe in.

Obama’s budget proposal is a declaration of war.

The porkulus bill was ordinary leftyism, or ordinary politics, taken to the next level. I estimate the productive elements of the US economy could have paid for it. Remember, we do get some value out of the $787B. The money is not all set on fire, just put to less productive uses.

Since TJIC is abstaining for Lent, I’ll try to step in:

"Otherwise, freedom will be sacrificed" is not a phrase that some of us will ever accept. I'll take to the streets, back alleys, and the like, to physically fight what is easily a Marxist attempt at extinguishing our freedoms.

So I die fighting for what was fought for by Washington, Hamilton, Knox, et. al., hell, I'll die for a good cause and in good company.

I realize many, many of our citizens have never even held a gun and cannot imagine doing any harm to another but that's ok, they can simply pass the ammo.

My political views were not so long ago described by a fellow community activist as, “to the left of libertarian.” I took it as a compliment. Contradictory to the common stereotype that libertarians are conservatives who like to get high, lefties and libertarians share much common ground. Or they used to. Leftyism used to be about personal freedom, non-violence, and making sure government “keeps its laws off my body”.

The current President last night told Congress:

Because of this [porkulus] plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Health care professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.

Corporations and their executives are often harangued for focusing on short-term profits over long-term profitability. Greed is seen as the core of evil, responsible for every lost job and every foreclosed house.

Focusing on the short-term is bad management. At least if the immediate goals jeopardize or sacrifice distant and enduring goals. But this myopic affliction of greed is not limited to the boardroom or the trading floor:

The Barrister posts:

Businesses are required to track their income, expenses and obligations according to a standard set of rules. The rules are called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. Although there are complexities and abuses, following GAAP allows businesses to be reliably compared against competitors. GAAP helps the Securities and Exchange Commission deter management from manipulating the books to overstate profits or hide liabilities.

The porkulus bill is such an amazing over-reach of Federal power, I conclude that with its passage, the US Government will no longer be a legitimate authority. Adherence to US law will descend from being morally proper to being merely pragmatic or convenient. This need not be chaos; our conduct can still be guided by personal honor, social mores, and common-law tradition.

My conclusion has led me to wonder, exactly where is the line between legitimate and illegitimate government? When was, or when will be, that line crossed?

Banking problems are not currently a headline issue. When raised, the tone is almost invariably anti-bank. Barney Frank, Barry, and the chorus of talking heads are upset that banks aren’t making loans. As though these evil, greedy people are padding their fortunes by stuffing cash in their mattresses and somehow vicitmizing the hard-working middle class.

Balderdash.

Barney Frank needs to get one piece of information firmly lodged in his brain - to a bank, deposits are liabilities and loans are assets. It's not that banks don't need and want to lend the money they have. It's that they don't want to lose the money they have, because then they will have to pay it back from their assets that are still good, thus suppressing lending further to good credit risks.

It is essential to recognize a distinction between merely working and working to create wealth. A policy goal to create jobs, to put people to work, is a formalization of the old joke about hiring half the people to dig holes and then hiring the other half to fill the holes. Everyone is working a job, but nobody is better off. No wealth was created through shifting dirt.

Tom Blumer does a better job making a couple of my recent points:

Before its release, experts predicted that the economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) had contracted by an annualized 5%-6% during that period. The actual annualized -3.8% from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) was not nearly that bad.

I don’t have time to develop my thoughts fury about Barry’s persistent anti-hope message about the American people’s economy. Coyote fills the breach:

Barrack Obama, in the Washington Post:

By now, it’s clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression

Sorry, maybe I am just cynical from having politicians call 8 of the last 3 recessions the worst economy since the Great Depression**, but I don’t think this is the worst crisis since the 1930’s.  It’s not even the worst since I was born.  The late 70’s were worse, the early 80’s were worse, and from a financial/banking crisis point of view, the late 80’s were worse.

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers for corralling civilians on military installations.

The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.