ECONOMY:
The CIA lists the US as the most broke country in the world by a looooong way.
TAX AND SPEND:
EU tells Greek government that its spending cuts aren't enough to justify a bailout. Who's going to blink first?
""You will have to look into the future, do the responsible thing, and begin moving toward a system of personal accounts. That is the only long-term solution," said Jose Pinera of America's social security and pension system.Pinera knows what he's talking about - he's the architect of social security reform in Chile. Introducing a recent interview with Pinera, Fox Business Network's Brian Sullivan said, "Thirty years ago, the social security system of Chile was broke, flat-busted. Entitlement reform was just destroying the nation's finances. In walks the Harvard-educated Jose Pinera. He pushed through by force of will a plan to privatize their entire entitlement system and social security - there is no government social security in Chile now - and everybody has a private account.""
Give everybody their share based on what they paid in and took out so far and move on. I paid in a lot of money I'd like to have back right now.
"In the Cato Institute's 1975 Economic Freedom of the World Report, Chile ranked 71 out of 72 nations evaluated. And while Latin American countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have become more centralized and destitute, Chile now has the highest per-capita income in Latin America - largely because it embraced free trade and pension privatization."Economics is not rocket science. Economic freedom always leads tremendous prosperity. Central planning always leads to destitution. Just do it.
"And the first thing Pinera did as Chile's Secretary of Labor was guarantee the benefits for the elderly, but forced a change in the younger generation."Exactly what I keep advocating. We have to live up to our obligations to our seniors, but we have to free working people from the burden of Social Security. I think seniors are the natural allies to make this happen. Once seniors understand that the checks are going to disappear if they don't reform Social Security, then we can reform Social Security.
Article claims because so many people are employed by government, cutting government spending is another third rail of politics. Baloney. Democrats wish that was true, but Democrats are getting ousted all over the country including in traditionally liberal strongholds. Despite the growth of government dependency, the American people still see that we need to change course.
I told you that CBO report claiming the stimulus had created jobs was bogus. Here's how the scam worked:
"[T]he CBO’s calculations are not based on actually observing the economy’s recent performance. Rather, they used an economic model that was programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs — thus guaranteeing their result."Congress is a bunch of crooks.
REGULATION:
Now Obama wants to ban foreclosures until they've been screened by a government program. Obama solution to every problem is to point a gun at people's heads and order us to do what he says.
HEALTH CARE:
I can't help but laugh at that travesty of a health care summit yesterday. Democrats had no intention of changing anything. They were hoping to either sway one Senate Republican or enough of the American people to get their version passed. It was their way or the highway. They never had any intention of compromising. Good for Republicans for standing their ground. So today Democrats are back at work trying to deliver the coup de gras to the health care system they've crippled over the years.
Obama calls bringing the Senate health care bill to the summit a political stunt.
"But he also tried to call out the Republicans when they fell back on their usual tactics, noting at one point that Minority Whip Eric Cantor had a six-inch-high stack of papers in front of him. “Let me just guess, that’s the 2400 page Democratic bill,” Obama said before Cantor started speaking. “These are the kinds of political things we do that prevent us from actually having a conversation."I guess he doesn't like reference documents. Cantor brought that bill to expose Democrats lies - that's the real reason Obama didn't like it. A good observation from Boortz:
"A bipartisan health care reform agreement can only be achieved when the Republicans sign on to Democrat ideas."That's how it was.
Quote from spokesman Gibbs:
"It's a tax on insurance companies that offer Cadillac, or quite frankly, Rolls Royce policies that in essence people don't need."Nothing like an elitist central planner who thinks he knows what other people need better than those people do.
What's this baloney about removing an exemption from anti-trust actions for insurance companies? Have you noticed any health insurance company without competition? This is a pseudo-solution without a problem. It's nothing but a threat to turn the FTC attack dogs loose on insurance companies for no reason.
Feds to slash Medicare payments by 21 percent. Doctors threaten to turn away Medicare patients. Some will. Most won't. Most will raise their prices on the rest of us to make up the difference. But this what I'm saying about seniors being the natural allies of entitlement reform. The checks are stopping if we don't reform it, and they don't want the checks to stop coming.
GLOBAL WARMING:
Obama's energy secretary says the US must cut electricity use so the rest of the world can develop. To him, it's an either/or equality concern. Now we know why Obama hired this guy.
Just to show how far Gore and his climate frauds have fallen, politicians in UK want to ban his fraudulent film in government schools.
WAR:
Democrats finally admit that the techniques used by CIA interrogators aren't torture by sneakily trying to ban "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" of detainees. I guess they couldn't come up with more vague language. I don't want detainees being treated that way either. Anybody treating that way should be fired. Waterboard them and be done with it. If they don't want to be waterboarded, they can put on a uniform.
North Korea threatens nuclear attack if US and South Korea hold join exercises. We should denuclearize North Korea before it can carry out that threat. The six party talks do nothing but enable NK to continue developing its bomb.
POLITICS:
Incumbent New York Governor who backed into office after disgraced Governor Spitzer resigned won't seek election because of scandal.
Charlie Crist to quit Republicans and run as independent. Another RINO gone.
Howard Dean plays the race card on tea partiers. Hey Dean, when in my lifetime did everybody in America look like me?
Scott Brown getting ripped, and I mean ripped, on his Facebook page for voting to take $15 billion from Americans by force and give it to people who didn't earn it in another counterproductive stimulus boondoggle. Get with the program, Brown. If the people of Massachusetts had wanted a big-government Senator, they would have voted Democrat.
State legislator calls disabled kids God's punishment. Shame on anybody who voted for this weirdo.
MISC:
As if in response to my day - ten reasons not to talk on the phone. It doesn't list the most important reason - I'm doing something else.
Smoking makes women's breasts sag. Note to self: don't date any more smokers.
How Hamilton and his monarchist allies overthrew the Articles of Confederation then advanced their all-powerful central government agenda through the courts.
"[Hamilton protege] Story admitted that social contract theories of “voluntary” state formation were mere theoretical fantasies. He also held the rather creepy and totalitarian, if not barbarian view that “The majority must have a right to accomplish that object by the means, which they deem adequate for the end . . . . The will of the majority of the people is absolute and sovereign, limited only by its means and power to make its will effectual.”
What Story is saying here is not that there should be a national plebescite on all policy issues that can express the “will of the majority.” No, as with Hamilton he adopted the French Jacobin philosophy that such a “will” was possessed in the minds of the ruling class, and that that class (the Storys, Hamiltons, Marshalls, etc.) somehow possessed“absolute” power as long as it has the military means to “make its will effectual.” Here we have the theoretical basis for Abe Lincoln’s waging of total war on his own citizens."The nonsense we see in Washington isn't new, it's only more advanced. Like today's scientists stand on the shoulders of those who came before them, today's tyrant wannabes stand on the shoulders of those who came before them too.
"The only group of Americans to ever seriously challenge this false nationalist theory, Southern secessionists, were mass murdered by the hundreds of thousands, including some 50,000 civilians according to James McPherson; their cities and towns were bombed and burned to the ground, tens of millions of dollars of private property was plundered by the U.S. Army; Southern women, white and black, were raped; and total war was waged on the civilian population. This is what finally cemented into place the false, Hamiltonian/nationalist theory of the American founding, for the victors always get to write the history in war. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, is “limited only” by the state’s “power to make its will effectual,” as Joseph Story proclaimed. The technology of mass murder in the hands of the state finally made this will “effectual” in the first half of the 1860s. Americans have been mis-educated and misinformed about their own political history ever since. It is this mis-education, this false theory of history, that serves to prop up the Hamiltonian empire that Americans now slave under."I never thought of how the war for southern independence twisted the history we learn today beyond the war itself.
