Negative Railroad A Collection of Breaks in the Line

With all the talk about China financing the US debt, one would think the Chinese are running a budget surplus. They’re not. The Chinese government appears to be afflicted with neo-Keynesian foolishness, too:

China announced Thursday a fiscal deficit budget of 950 billion yuan (139 billion U.S. dollars) for 2009, a record high in six decades, as the country boosts spending to cushion the impact of the global financial crisis.

Education is like torture. Or, the opposite of torture, in the way popular culture regards it.

We are all proud to hear that the United States does not torture, but we do not have a sound, common definition of what constitutes torture. Torture is vague, something that evil people do. Take waterboarding. Some say it is obviously cruel, while others point out that we do it to our own as a routine part of training. We go on to ignore the lack of definition and argue about whether this vague idea is effective, and under which hypotheticals it might be exceptionally permissible.

Listening to the talking heads defend, explain and justify the policies of the Failed Obama Administration™, I realize who the leader of the GOP really is: George W. Bush.

The lefties have all the power. They respond to every challenge against their use of that power by looking in the rear-view mirror. Barry says all his problems are inherited. So, the man commanding all this Democrat energy is actually the previous President.

Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are one of the financial instruments at the center of the financial maelstrom. I came across an interesting fact about them:

Blythe Masters made her career early on by recognizing the potential for credit derivatives, hedges that banks use to offset the risk of loan defaults. Despite her youth, she had enough gravitas to convince regulators around the world of the essential soundness of the little-known financial instruments.

Yesterday was NRR’s weekly stop for Bar Night. I overheard one of the regulars lamenting that Rush Limbaugh’s rhetoric of wanting Obama to fail would incite violence from groups like the KKK. I don’t think racists wackjobs need any help building their fury. Further, I do not see Limbaugh as an opinion leader. He gives voice and clarity to what his audience already believes, rather than feeding them beliefs to cling to.

It isn’t Limbaugh’s rhetoric at the root of our imminent civil unrest. Barry is the one inciting violence with inflammatory speech:

Other presidents have been accused of using "enemies" as a political rallying point. Almost invariably, however, these enemies have been foreign (the "evil empire" and "axis of evil"). Obama is the first president "in my adult life" to set American against American, to create enemies at home as a political rallying point, to create a climate in which law-abiding American citizens are singled out as being worthy of attack.

Yep, Barack has met the enemy, and he is us.

Investing legend and Presidential economic adviser Warren Buffettt, “the Oracle of Omaha”, last week released his annual letter to shareholders of his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway. The resulting headlines were focused on Buffett’s prediction for 2009: The economy will be in shambles.

One of the justifications for the US goverments panoply of bailouts is that a recessionary environment forms a vicious cycle. Here’s Tokyo Rose himself, pimping for porkulus last month:

With the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs.

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.

Love survives the absence of peace.

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.

Neo-neocon senses a hunger for class warfare:

The feeling has been fed by decades of maceration in the idea that life is supposed to be fair and that fairness equals equality; that people are entitled to do well financially; that it’s a zero-sum game in which, if your neighbor is doing better than you are, then he/she is taking something away from you; that economic downturns are always the fault of the rich doing something underhanded and crooked; and that taking it out on the rich will benefit the rest of us.

H/T: Theo Spark

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.

A Vermont lefty—and Obama voter—awakens [emphasis in original]:

I looked so forward to not having to listen to that stupid, smug son-of-a-bitch "W" Bush. I was really excited about the prospects of having a smart, eloquent, level-headed leader speaking in plain truths and common sense. I am such an asshole! What I have come to realize is that even though I found Bush-the-dumber virtually impossible to listen to, I always thought it was because he was such a self-congratulatory moron. But what I have quickly come to understand is that it was NOT his insipid, shit-assed grin, or his quasi-literate references to Noooquoooler Weaponsssssssssss that made me nutso, it was his lying. And the reason I know that now is because I feel THE EXACT SAME WAY about our new President.

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”.

On any given day, the world is exactly six bullets away from being saved.

Quoted from: Vanderleun

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.

I cannot possibly be the first to offer this snark:

After September 11, 2001, the stock market (DJIA) hit a low of 7286. As I type, the Dow is at 7285.

The current President has crashed a loaded jetliner into the US economy.

The previous President made sure the plane was ready for take-off. Last week, Congress made sure it had $800B of fuel on board. And Barry is the pilot aiming it at Wall Street.

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:

Higher education is remedial education, and the affliction it remedies is an American upbringing.

Quoted from: William Voegeli

Via: Maggie’s Farm