Out of Touch

As usual, it is all about Obama.  Our Warriors are but pawns in supporting his political future...

Mitt Romney on Taxes and California

#hhrs #tcot   
From Jim Geraghty:

On California governor Jerry Brown’s call for a referendum in November on his proposal for an $8.5 billion tax hike:
“I think you are seeing the result of a series of actions in California, actions that have led to public-sector unions’ having benefits and wages out of line with those in the private sector. There’s an unwillingness to deal with fiscal problems before they reach near-crisis level. And the high rate of taxes in California is causing businesses to leave California.

“I hope that doesn’t accelerate, but as the governor continues to raise taxes on the most successful, the most successful will leave. Others will decide to not open their doors because the risk will be too great that even if they’re successful, the government will end up taking what they earn. The governor is taking them in the wrong direction. I wish Californians had elected Meg Whitman. She would have been more successful and explained to Californians the need to cut back on spending and eliminate unnecessary programs. There are other states that have very different records. I think it’s interesting that the state with the highest or among the highest tax rates in the nation also has the worst or near the worst deficit.

“You can’t tax your way out of debt or a deficit. You simply have to rein in the size of the government, because the government will simply ask for more and more and more, until the taxpayers finally say ‘enough.’”

Mitt Romney on Greece

#hhrs #tcot   
From Jim Geraghty:

On whether Greece should leave the euro, and whether the euro was a mistake from the beginning: 
“I think the euro is under the stress that many had predicted. Cobbling together in one currency nations with such different fiscal policies and such different levels of productivity was bound to cause strains that, if not addressed, could imperil the other nations and the currency itself. The fact that Greece has found it difficult to live up to the commitments it made coming into the euro — that has made those stresses even greater. And now you have an extremely threatening setting that has the entire world holding its breath. We’re all concerned about what might happen to Greece and the people there if aggressive action is not taken to restore its fiscal balance and allow it to grow again and start participating fully in the world economy. I can’t predict precisely what will happen. That will depend upon the people of that nation, the leaders of that nation, and the leaders of countries like France and Germany. They may decide that it’s in their interest to try to cover for the shortfalls of another nation, but that is yet to be seen.”

Mitt Romney on Bain Capital & Private Equity

#hhrs #tcot   
From Jim Geraghty:

On the fact that one of his successors at Bain Capital, Jonathan Lavine, is a top Obama bundler:
“I have no problem with people who have differing political sentiments participating in the political process. I can say I know that the Obama campaign misfired with this attack. The GS Steel Enterprises events that are in question occurred after I left the firm, so that obviously is not a very effective attack. Although the whole idea that we’re going to attack people in private equity — who make over 100 investments to get results in any one investment — is a very strange course for the president to take. I realize, however, that the president wants to do anything he can to deflect attention from his record, and he will persist in personal attacks.”


On how a firm like Bain can make money while the companies it manages, such as GST or Dade Bering, can fail:
“With very few exceptions, the times you are successful in an investment are when the enterprise itself becomes larger and more successful. That is how our firm and other firms were able to achieve such success. There are a few exceptions where an enterprise is doing well, and realizing dividends from its success, but then it encounters a reversal in circumstances, and it no longer does well. . . . That tends to be rare. The people in my firm, in every investment we made, we wanted to make the business more successful. The cartoon caricature of investors coming in, taking all the money out of a business and leaving it bankrupt is, of course, absurd. The only way you make money in the industry that I’m familiar with is by making the business more successful, more profitable, not by making it less so.”

Mitt Romney on Patriotic Debt

#hhrs #tcot   
From Jim Geraghty:

During the campaign of 2008, Obama said that running up $4 trillion in debt was “unpatriotic.” On whether he would use the same term to describe Obama’s running up $5 trillion:
 
“I’ll call it inexcusable and disappointing that a president who was so critical of his predecessor for roughly $400 billion to $500 billion annual deficits is now running trillion-dollar deficits and has not apologized for them. When a president says that he pledges to cut this deficit in half by the end of his first term, and he’s doubled it instead — that shows he is on the wrong track. I try to avoid highly incendiary language, but this is something that puts our country very much at risk.”

Mitt Romney on Restoring our AAA Credit Rating

#hhrs #tcot   
From Jim Geraghty:

On restoring America’s AAA credit rating, and how long that would take:

“I believe that if we show we have tackled our long-term unfunded liabilities, which are primarily Social Security and Medicare, and if we have killed certain federal programs, and if we’re on track to have a balanced budget in about eight years or so, at that point rating agencies will recognize that our credit rating is solid.

“ . . . Right now, the challenge from having been downgraded is not as apparent [as it might be] to the American people because the world is frightened of the euro, and so people are bringing their cash to the United States. That is holding down interest rates here. In addition, the Federal Reserve is purchasing our treasuries and holding down interest rates here. But at some point these features will come to an end, and if we are not on track to having a superior credit rating, we will start paying the costs of higher interest.”

Mitt Romney on the National Debt

From Jim Geraghty:

Mitt Romney on getting Americans to focus on the difficult, sometimes abstract issues of the deficit and accumulating national debt:
 
“I think it helps to translate the federal-debt and unfunded-liability numbers into personal numbers. The total amount of accumulated debt and unfunded liabilities is approximately $520,000 per American household. What that means is that each household will be paying the interest on the debt and paying the principal on the unfunded liabilities over the coming decade or two. It means that our kids will get saddled with that $520,000 — which of course will become a good deal larger over the next four or five years if the president is reelected.

“That number says that as interest rates go up, as they undoubtedly will down the road, people will get burdened with a tax figure that makes it harder for them to start their lives out, get homes, and build a future for themselves. It really kills the American Dream to be burdened with that kind of a figure from the beginning of your life. And so I think that’s the most effective way I can talk about the personal impact, long term, of this debt and unfunded-liability burden.

“There is also a recognition in this country that what Greece and Italy and Spain are facing could conceivably be brought home to us. The recognition that you reach a point where the world decides that your obligations are perhaps not going to be met, or that they will be inflated away — in which case people will ask for higher interest rates, and you’ll find yourself in a doom loop.”

The 'New Tone' at its Finest

Remember earlier in the year when the Left insisted that the Right needed to speak with a "New Tone" and avoid use of "violent" language? Hard to remember isn't it??

Of course, since then, as the Left's prospects have cratered, there have been numerous ironic examples of speech from the Left tinged with violent imagery. Mostly silly words or phrases that was really not violent at all, but did manage to get the Left's undies in a bunch when the Right used them.

But this example, no surprise from a Union thug [and leader], takes the cake:

Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had some profane, combative words for Republicans while warming up the crowd for President Obama in Detroit, Michigan on Monday.

"We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war," Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said to a heavily union crowd.

"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong," Hoffa added.

New tone, my ass....

And since this was a warm-up speech for President Obama, he must agree with it, no? I haven't heard a denunciation yet... I am sure he will present one after his next vacation.

2011 SOTU Word Cloud

A quick look before tonight's speech, here is a word cloud of its most common words....



I suppose it is not a surprise that 3 of the most used words are "new", "American", and "jobs".

I am sure there has to be a message hidden in there somewhere.....

[h/t to the ever-handy Wordle]

America, The Gulliver of Nations

Powerline posts a keen insight on how Great Britain's present, may become our future:

Once the federal government becomes so deeply involved in allocating health care, it will come to be a dominant focus of political discourse.

Over the years watching on C-Span the British Prime Minister's Question Time, I've observed that a large portion of this exercise is devoted to specific questions about the quality care provided by The National Health Service in members' districts. A question on the terrorists threats to the UK will invariably be followed by a passionate query from a Member asking the PM if he's aware of nurses being re-assigned at a hospital in Sheffield. The PM seems to spend as much time on parochial health care issues as on national security.

The politics of deciding who gets what in the way of medical treatment doubtlessly will push aside traditional affairs of state. Every member of Congress will need to hire several staff members just to manage constituents' complaints about their care. Elections will be won and lost on the basis of who can get the most in the way of health care for their districts.

We will become the Gulliver of nations, a great power whose leaders are tied up in strings as they spend much of their time addressing the medical complaints, valid and imagined, of their electorate.

We *will* become the Gulliver of nations. And it will not just be due to healthcare. The more our Federal government becomes so deeply involved in the regulation of anything and everything (education, the environment, banking, retirement, fishing, car manufacturing....etc), the more we tie ourselves down. The more the Liliputians UN bureaucrats will take advantage of us. The more we will make ourselves irrelevant.

Hope. Change. Rinse. Repeat.

Line of the day:

Hope. Change. Rinse. Repeat.

From Don Surber's 'Blue States Sour on The Won'

As Don would say in his Daily Scoreboard....Good.

States of Disrepair

We can learn lessons from state's failed 'Progressive' programs.

Most good conservative thinkers make the Federalist argument that we should strive to limit the power and reach of the federal government, and instead leave most matters to be handled by the individual states.

However, recent events might give many conservatives pause concerning this cornerstone philosophy, given that some states have been acting like teenagers who have been handed the keys to the liquor cabinet and family car on the same key chain.

Take for instance articles from today concerning three of the most prominent 'Blue' states.

New York - The Obsolete New York Model: Where a tax-eating majority votes itself a permanent income....Struggling under the accumulated burden of eight decades of “progressive” government, we New Yorkers can serve as a warning to our fellow Americans as President Obama, following the New Deal playbook, seeks to use the current financial crisis to provide a new rationale and legitimacy for the gargantuan machinery of the federal government.

California - Following Calif. Off A Green Cliff: Climate Change: A 2006 California law meant to lead the way on global warming looks like an economic disaster in the making. So far, Congress and Obama have ignored the warnings.

Massachusetts - Bay State Rationing: Health Care: Massachusetts' universal medical program is no longer universal. Coverage is being dropped for 30,000 because not enough money is around to pay for everyone. There's a lesson in this for Congress.

The running theme here is that these states have implemented unsustainable government largesse, and show us exactly what President Obama's proposed programs will bring us on a national scale. They are the cure that makes the disease worse.

Of course, one only need compare these examples to other states that have fared much better. To be parochial, I will trumpet my adopted home state....

Texas - Going Alamo: Why jobs and companies are flocking to a big small-government state. If you want to know where the future is headed, look where the people are going. And if you want to know where the people are going, check with U-Haul. Here's an interesting indicator, first noted by the legendary economist Arthur Laffer: Renting a 26-foot U-Haul truck to go from Austin to San Francisco this July would cost you about $900. Renting the same truck to go from San Francisco to Austin? About $3,000. In the great balance of supply and demand, California has a large supply of people who are demanding to move to Texas. There's a reason for this.

God help me if I ever get orders to PCS to California!

Could Obama Help Turn Indiana Red Again?

"Remember how President Obama blamed Chrysler's bankruptcy filing last month on "a small group of speculators" who turned down Treasury's $2 billion final offer for their $6.9 billion in debt?"

It appears that the list of evil 'speculators' included the likes of retired Indiana State Policemen, retired Indiana Teachers, and Indiana motorists.

Vultures!

Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock revealed this week that his state's police and teacher pension funds have lost millions of dollars in the Chrysler "restructuring." Indiana's State Police Fund and Major Moves Construction Fund, which finances roads and bridges, together lost more than $1 million. And the Teacher's Retirement Fund "suffered, at a minimum, a loss of $4.6 million due to the action of the Federal government," reports Mr. Mourdock.

Attention RNC, NRSC, & NRCC....if you don't go into Indiana with adds that directly link Obama and his 'Gangster Government' tactics to the losses at state pension funds....you would be complete idiots. And don't wait until 2010...start TV ads now.

Indiana used to be a Red State, and only voted for Obama by a little more than 28K votes out of 2.7 mil votes cast. Use his actions that have directly hurt the 'speculators' in Indiana's retired population and turn Indiana RED again....

And you think that Indiana will be the only state where pension funds have been roughed up by the hoods from Pennsylvania Ave, you have been asleep. I am quite sure this could be an effective tactic to elect Senator Giuliani....

Calvin Coolidge – 2012

Some food for thought this weekend....

We think that the government and our elected officials are taking us in the wrong direction. However theirs are not new ideas. As evidenced by the quotes below those ideas have been foisted upon us before (many times), but we have survived....

I think Calvin Coolidge could make quite a bit of headway in 2012 with his line of thinking...

“Don’t hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.” - 1914

“Money will not purchase liberty or good government.” - 1916

“No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and corporations pay the taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil.” - 1924

“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.” - 1924

“The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and in all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to become successful.” - Inaugural Address, 1925

“Whenever some people find that abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying a remedy themselves, they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.” - 1928

“We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts….self-government means self-reliance.” - 1930