Sword and Sextant

That is the lesson for today, children. When you are a big corporation rampant with fraud/waste/bad judgment, your first move should never be to lean on Mommy Government for a free bailout. There are myriad principled reasons for this, many of which regard robbing your own customers, the taxpayers, of their money so you can continue bad practices.

I thought it was the wrong way to go for each of these corporations and for the government, as well. However, I think the punishment for the very executives that caused this mess will be 60% right on target, but 40% completely wrong. Let’s break each half down:

60% on target:

Executives control the direction of a corporation. They push products, investments, practices, and policies to their workers and retail outlets, in whatever fashion they are manifested. These men, bankers and auto guys alike, used poor judgment in handling corporate affairs, and their businesses tanked. They then asked the taxpayers, or more accurately the Congress, for a governmental bailout, funneled by friends in high places to their coffers. They let the government in, and now they deserve the paycuts, and all the crap that comes their way from allowing power-hungry politicians a piece of their own pie. Their moral deficiencies are their own estates’ downfall.

40% way off:

The government caused huge parts of these problems that led to the failure of banks and the auto industry. GM and Chrysler STILL pay far more to their employees than Toyota and Honda, which leads to higher quality at a lower price for the Japanese automakers. Banks were forced by the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to poor risks to maintain profit margins they are obligated to pursue for their shareholders. Unions and housing aid firms like, you guessed it, ACORN, each played their governmentally-backed role in forcing unworkable conditions for these giants of Corporate America.

I’d normally have these ratios at 50/50, but Ford did it the right way. Even under the burden of their problems, this organization stood up to the temptation of “free money” from the Feds, and they are pressing ahead. Similarly, smaller banks, and some of the larger ones have returned (or attempted to return) their money from the TARP program. The banking system was an actual liquidity crisis, so I would rank immediate return of money almost as high as Ford’s flat refusal.

The government is an evil, sinister mistress when it comes to gaining power, isn’t she? When banks wanted out of the TARP controls, she wasn’t quite ready for some of that return. Nay, the hooks were in Citi and the others, and they don’t come out so easily. Even small banks were subject to mysterious “liquidity tests”, and many were refused at the door, even when providing enormous proof of their solvency. As a friend to my father’s bankers, I have heard these tales.

So let us partially enjoy watching the result of giving in to base tendencies and letting the government “save you” for the greater good. Always for the greater good.

A bit OT: What happens if GM fails again? Does it get another bailout? The new car sales bubble directly caused by Cash for Clunkers is hurting the business, as well as creating a new used parts scarcity that we haven’t even seen yet, as all the old cars can’t be salvaged. Does Ford get their fair bailout if their problems swallow them up, or does the government only protect GM/Chrysler? Who decides what companies should be owned by the government if it comes to saving a sector? Who is the almighty arbiter of whether GE, Phillips, Kohler, Sun Microsystems, or Nabisco get a pass on bad business?

Finally, what is the impact on the average citizen who is now being shown that the government no longer respects or is willing to accept that freedom and capitalism is the freedom to succeed AND to fail? Just the other day, a friend was telling me about his science fair experience back in high school (some 20 years hence). He got first place and a blue ribbon in one of them, which he really thought was great, until he realized that the top 1/3 got his ribbon, the next third got a red 2nd place ribbon, and the bottom 1/3 received a third place ribbon. Even the worst showing got a prize. Its no wonder my generation is so effed up politically when no one has been scolded in class, spanked by their parents, out first in dodgeball (not even allowed anymore), picked last in kickball, cut from a sports team, or given no accolades for poor work. Kids aren’t even held back in school anymore for failing to progress! Their social development is too fragile, the teachers (and whoever) argue.

Isn’t that a funny term? “Social” development. Sounds a lot like “social” justice to me, in that its a bastardization of a real term to mean something that you only use when hiding children or even adults from the realities of the world we live in. Our President uses terms like that all the time, which gives me quite the view into his psyche.

Just thought I’d mention that while the Pentagon, the SecDef, and the citizenry are demanding some action on the situation in Afghanistan, our President chose… well, he went with the snooze button.

At the very least, pull soldiers out while you him and haw (sp?) around, Mr. President. You are the decider, remember? Do you remember when you said that? Soldiers are dying while you teeter on the fence! Its tragic to lose them when there is a goal in mind, but senseless and criminal to let them die without a clear mission! I don’t give a shit what Bush did, and we can’t change it anyhow. Pull the fucking trigger one way or another.

I will tell you what I have told you before. Environmentalism, like health care, is not, nor ever has been, about improving the lives of Americans or anyone in the world. These causes are the modern movers of Communism in our time.

No, not socialism. Communism. Creating a faux equality between all citizens, with government officials watching them all from the highest tower. A shapeless mass of serfs, watched and controlled by their betters, the shepherds in the sky.

The mask is falling away quickly, but only because they are so close. Think about this: If you are in power when you sign a treaty to create new powers over the citizens of a nation or a global government, who decides who controls that new force? Why, its you, isn’t it? What Honduras’ Zelaya tried so crudely to do, our masters now lawfully pursue right before our eyes!

Here is a video from a climatologist that the World forgot:

This nation is in dire need of some citizen activism that isn’t instantly demonized by the media and those democrats who prefer to look away until the September of an election year. First, they came for your tax dollars. Next, they came for your health care. Next, they came for your carbon emissions.

Freedom is in great peril. Let us fight for it!

According to a Rasmussen poll just released recently, Huckabee is winning amongst GOP candidates at this moment.

/collecting

This is a fucking outrage. This man is a terrible representative of the GOP, as one can easily see by his horrible governing tactics and taxation record. Is the party reduced to voting for someone who fucking LOST to John McCain as our next hope?

McCain got floored by Obama, and Huckabee is a worse candidate all around. I swear to effing God, I’d rather have another four years of Obama than Mike Huckabee’s formerly fat ass in the Oval Office. There is no amount of damage Obama can do to this nation greater than the outright death of the Republican Party at the hands of a RINO bastard like Huckabee. Stop this man at all costs! Sound the alarm!

The man IS Bill Clinton. Quite literally. Slick and smooth, he simply masquerades as a GOPer this time. Good God, the Earth will open up and swallow us all if Huckabee gets traction this time around.

The time for action is now. Find your conservative buds and cut the head off this monsterous nightmare scenario before its too late. These coming elections are about lower taxes, tough foreign policy, fiscal responsibility, and individualism. They are NOT about pardoning murderers, raising every tax possible, and being on fucking FOXNEWS.

Get out there and stop that man!

The military wants some stuff. What do they want?

First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It’s a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground.

Why do they want it? Well, they have “an Urgent Operational Need.” That’s why. According to my knowledge of English, I believes that means that the weapon’s presence is required for operations in the near future.

Why now? The notification says simply, “The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON.” It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).

So, CentCom is involved, eh? There’s a bit o’ evidence. Did Congress give it to them?

The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide “Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration” on B-2 aircraft.

Yes, they did. They didn’t say anything about it, but they did. THIS is the kind of diplomacy I can get behind! Don’t have to say shit, but the big guns are suddenly getting built urgently. Now, why would we use this missile that can dig down and bathe things in the cleansing fires of American purification?

This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.

Oh snap. We’ve okayed dollars to build things that can erase the Iranians crazy pursuit of nukes. Very nice move, Congress. Now, if we can get the boy President to use them before Israel lashes out, we may just stave off millions of deaths. I wonder what Russia is thinking…

Wait, no I don’t. We take care of our allies and ourselves before considering imperialist scum countries like Russia. I hope they give us a reason to build that missile shield again.

This country is going to war with Iran sooner or later. Let’s face facts. The most kumbaya of liberals even resist the idea of Iran with nuclear weapons, as we all recognize how dangerous and crazy the mullahs are.

We are looking at World War 3 (III?), plain and simple. As I’ve posted before, one of three things will happen:

1) Iran gets a nuclear weapon. They use it on Israel, according to their doctrine of the last 60 years. World War 3 begins with the blood of Jews sprayed all over the world, and on the hands of those who allowed this to happen. Massive war versus the arab world (sound familiar to us Christians?). You can guarantee that the US will NOT allow Jerusalem to be an Arab city. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why we’ve stood behind Israel for decades in the face of the world.

2) Israel strikes Iran before they get a nuke. Syria, Libya, Egypt, the Saudis all go to war with Israel. Pakistan jumps in, causing India to freak out, as well. The Iraq coalition breaks down, Russia does ?, and China sells weapons for a fortune behind our backs. Massive World War, casualties in the millions (billions?), draft instated, $500/barrel oil prices.

3) The United States attacks Iran to prevent their nuke capability. A potential insurrection in Iran could crumble their power base, Israel is safe, but Iran declares war on America, threat of terror goes skyward, and we got a conflict on our hands. On the other hand, a World War is probably averted, based on the reaction of China and Russia.

In the wake of Obama’s failure to secure meaningful agreements with Iran, and his colossal failure to gladhand the Olympics, we are shown that Obama does not have the power that many in this nation thought he did in international matters. The worrisome sign we glean from this is that Obama still believes that he can talk and smile his way into a peaceful Iran. To be honest, the “agreement in principle” with Iran has already been refuted in detail by Russia, despite the White House claiming a huge victory.

This dangerous soft diplomacy has real repercussions, as Iran stalls its way to nuclear weapons and its capability to make more. Iran getting a weapon, all but imminent now, was the only guarantor of a war, and Obama threw away two golden chances to avert this without firing a shot. The electoral dissent of Iran was Obama’s last best hope to foment a deterioration of the ruling crazy-ass class, and sanctions early in the calendar year could have destroyed their economic platform to build these bombs. Now, the mullahs only need a small measure of time to start a war. Frankly, this war is on Obama’s hands.

I’ll state it clearly as I can. Obama’s foreign policy is damning millions to death. His allowance of Iranian nukes is tantamount to okaying a war. Barack Obama has very possibly damned millions to death by folding over and hiding from the Iranian issue, simply because he is concerned with global warming, socialized medicine, and community organizer issues. If Obama waits too long and Israel strikes at Iran, he will have the blood of Jews all over this Presidency. I sincerely doubt he wishes for this to happen, but you’re the President, and his own actions allowed this to begin with.

Meanwhile, we’re trying to tax ourselves into oblivion even when nobody has any of it to begin with. If we’re not careful, it will literally go up in flames. Ignoring the problem is not a possibility, Mr. President.

What a shock.

Add another tally to the Obama broken promises scoreboard. Remember that promise to have bills online 3 days before voting? Where is the transparency we were promised? That was one of the few promising things coming out of Candidate Obama’s mouth. Only too obvious it was too good to be true.

Now, conservatives knew since day one that Obama had no intention of holding to the lion’s share of his promises as a candidate, so that news is pretty weak. On the other hand, let’s discuss WHY the Dems are hiding health care and its bill from the public.

If support for reform is so great and beloved in the public square, why on Earth would they continually play bait-and-switch with the 5ish different plans, even as leaks hit the media that the public option is still getting into the final bill somehow, despite electoral defeats on several occasions? Liberals, pundits, and operatives insist that the health care plan is demanded by the populace, but for some reason all the details MUST be kept from the public at all costs. Doesn’t lend credibility to their arguments, does it?

Furthermore, keeping the details from people like myself, who will savage the unvarnished socialism within also keeps the details from those who may sincerely agree with and defend the plan. It makes you wonder about the liberals who are so wedded to the plan, doesn’t it? How can they defend a plan they don’t have the actual details of? I’m gonna guess blind partisan hackery/foolishness.

I can see it now:

“I love health care reform, and we need it now more than anything. Its vital to this nation and its future. Even when it has no bipartisan support, and there are rifts within my own party, we should go against national polling numbers to force this down everyone’s throat for their own good. Dems know better what is best for the people, and they SHOULD force it tyrannically on the citizens. I know I don’t have any details for this plan that anyone in Congress will stand by for even two seconds, and the Dems suppress further details of the bill at all costs, but I know for a fact that this nation NEEDS a health care bill it will not let us see.”

Here’s one thing they wanted to hide: The current version of the bill taxes medical devices. What does that cover, you might ask? Well, I got that for you too! It includes pacemakers, motorized wheelchairs, heart valves, GI tubes, and all that good shit!

Now, who uses most of that stuff? The elderly! Cut $550B/year from Medicare to start, then tax their medical devices! I suppose I can see why they wish to hide that from the populace after all. The MDMA is already putting a full court press on the Senate, trying to express what damage the tax, designed to raise $50B a year, will do to the elderly.

Wasn’t this bill supposed to cut health care costs? There are a lot of Dems out there claiming that the GOP simply wants you to die, and yet they are the ones slashing Medicare and levying taxes on medical devices the aged population uses the vast majority of.

I have personally been accused of spreading misinformation and lies about this health care plan, but its quite literally the Dems who are censoring any possibility of factual debate by hiding behind the new gauze curtain. One more morsel to chew on: Obama has championed this bill, yet has not suggested a single provision or had any hand it writing the damn thing. The central issue of his Presidency was outsourced to Congress on his deed. Discuss.

Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm mmm mmm. Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm mmm mmm.

Now, I understand the IOC does not especially like America, but let me echo droves of others who assumed that Obama had this in the bag before showing up.

Eishenhower once stated that the President only shows up when victory is assured, and thus, I “knew” that Chicago had it locked up. I suspect the IOC unloaded Chicago first as a backhand to the nation brazen enough to send their President, and that they were the real 2nd choice going in.

Once again, this is a bad misstep for a President who needs a “win” recently. At least getting the Olympics could be a positive where his influence would have appeared to win the day, and the international relations snafus of the last few weeks could be forgotten. I’m continually surprised by the ineptitude of this outfit to put itself in situations it will succeed at.

Instead, the President threw the power of his office to the IOC committee and they smacked it down hard. I’m forced to suggest that he’s nowhere near the political mind that Bill Clinton was, and the wisdom we’ve been promised, regardless of my continual doubt and argument against, is simply not there. Has this man been taken everywhere he’s gone in his career? Is this the Manchurian Candidate? A “historic” puppet driven by the shadows of the far Left? I have no idea, but now that the boy-king is in charge, it seems misstep after misstep are all he’s got.

Unemployment would max at 9% WITHOUT the stimulus right? Uh oh, its at 9.8% now with it.

We’d be loved in the world again, right? Ask Poland, the Czechs, Honduras, Georgia, the UK and Israel about that.

The auto industry would return, right? Well, Michigan is depopulating after the CARS program forced car sales down after creating a bubble to fix the results of a federal takeover of GM.

Iran would pipe down and stop their nuke program, right? Um, not exactly. We dropped the missile shield against Russia and the Russians STILL won’t support sanctions, and China won’t either.

We’d fix heathcare right? The House Bill costs $1T in ten years, the Bauccus bill costs $1.7T, and neither even covers the uninsured all the way. Even Dems won’t sign on to that poison.

The bills in Congress would be transparent, right? Several bills weren’t revealed until hours before passage even to the GOP, let alone the citizenry. The stimulus was PASSED and SIGNED before it was read.

No tax hikes on the middle class, right? The cigarette tax hits middle and low income families hardest. Cap and tax AND HR 3200 both include tax increases on the whole of the nation. Not close here. There’s even talk of a sugary drinks tax. LOL. Value-added tax is actually on the table again, as well! Party!

Working toward energy independence, right? Well, nuclear power is still on hold, no offshore drilling (except for Brazil), and huge regulations on CO2, which the Supreme Court (all environmental/physical scientists) ruled as a pollutant. On top of that, we’re moving toward hybrid cars, which NEED TO BE PLUGGED INTO THE WALL.

Well, he’s handled natural disasters much better than Bush, right? He hasn’t been to Georgia yet, who is in the midst of a 100-years flood, California burned to a crisp again this year, and New Orleans, the city Bush “forgot”, is still struggling to lift itself out of Katrina. Obama has not visited or mentioned any of these.

This President is a failure in every sense of the word, even to the point that the WaPo and the NYT have written hand-wringing, worrisome editorials cajoling their leader to act like President Obama, and not candidate Obama. Howard Fineman writing a piece harsh on a liberal is one of the signs of the apocalypse, I believe. He’s got some ground to cover to catch Carter as the worst President in history, but he’s got it in the bag at this rate. There is not a single facet of this administration that has gone as well as advertised, or really even worked as intended, and there is not one part of this nation that is stronger or better off for any policy he has championed, signed, or even argued for. May the voters deliver us from this atrocious leadership, and the vacuum it has left in the international community. Mark Levin had it right, Bibi Netanyahu is the new leader of the free world.

UPDATE (from Michelle Malkin):

Snort: Chicago crony WH adviser Axelrod on FNC lamenting “relationships & politics” at IOC that “we couldn’t overcome.”

Yep, Bush’s fault.