Razzle dazzle

To cover the self-admitted “political folly” of voting for Obamacare, what should poor Democrats Socialists do? 

Razzle-dazzle, of course.

James Carville to Obama: repackage your economic plan.

Heh.  I’m not sure you can repackage something quite so stinky: according to the Health and Human Services Secretary of Texas, Obamacare will cost our state almost 20 times Waxman’s estimate.  Allahpundit:

Waxman says it’ll cost $1.4 billion, Tom Suehs says it’s more like, oh, $27 billion.

See why real math education is a problem?

In all seriousness, as Gateway Pundit put it earlier, “It has begun.”

What might that be?

Democrat Socialist “Representative” (I use the term loosely) cancels local townhalls for safety fears.

He writes of Tim Ryan (D S-OH):

In his cancellation notice his staff made clear:

“Don’t get me wrong, Congressman Ryan will debate anyone, anytime.”

He’ll debate anyone at anytime.
…Just not in public and not at a town hall meeting.

[Oh, so easy with the abundance of low-lying fruit, it almost feels bad to laugh at such stupidity.  Almost.]

Much like Pundette, I’m suffering from Obama fatigue:

I’m feeling too cynical and burned out to comment much. I think my outrage meter is broken.

Dittto.  Especially when I realize that we’re only a YEAR into his term. 

Adiuva nos, Deus.  (I think we need coffee and excellent pastries to tide us over.  ; )

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Can you see Michelle singing “Don’t Cry for Me?”

Not so much.  But we’re headed for Argentina-style disaster.  From the Washington Examiner, United States of Argentina. 

What the United States government will do in the future may be in question, but we need not look far to find past examples of countries unwilling to get their finances in order. Consider Argentina. In 1914, it was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and its living standard exceeded that of Western Europe until the late 1950s. Then President Juan Peron squandered his nation’s prosperity by introducing a host of redistributionist economic and regulatory policies, nationalizing utilities and foreign investments, and pumping up the national debt. What followed was three decades of political instability, growing dependency, and economic stagnation.

 

There was a brief period of privatization and booming foreign investment in what the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Falcoff called Argentina’s “go go” 1990s. But that was negated by the return of political leaders espousing Peronist principles who created a downward economic spiral by breaking contracts with foreign utility companies that had invested heavily in Argentina. Today, the country has lost its international credit standing and an estimated 10 percent of the population has moved abroad to escape the stifling taxes, regulation and inefficiency. To make matters worse, President Cristina Kirchner recently attracted attention for firing the president of the country’s central bank. His sin was refusing to go along with her inflationary spending policies (Argentina’s inflation is 17 percent) and challenging her demand that he hand over $6.6 billion in bank reserves.

 

What scares me most: I used to read things like that and think, wow, what must life be like in a Thugocratic Socialist state?  Now I read things like that and say, wow, I wonder when Obama will try that.

 

Examiner, continued:

Besides sending federal spending skyrocketing, Obama has, like so many of the politicians who ruined Argentina, dramatically increased government regulation of business, nationalized major sectors of the economy, and imposed a lengthy list of tax increases. America today is no more exempt from economic reality than Argentina was in years past. Make no mistake, these actions will eventually drain the life from this nation’s economic vitality, just as they did in Argentina. 

I read an investment newsletter that recently looked to Argentina’s history as guidance.  Argentines would line up at banks on Friday to withdraw their savings because they didn’t trust the government–or the banks–over the weekend.  They redeposited the money the following Monday.  Likewise, Argentines tend to invest in tangibles–land, cows, horses–that can be sold even if currency loses value.  Can you imagine waking up one morning and your savings in the bank being worth one third of what it was?  Thanks to the government, that happened in 2002 in Argentina.   We should be so wise to 

 

My reps don’t represent me, either.

Great song via Instapundit.

Father must pay the court costs of the freaks who protested at his son’s military funeral. Yes, really.

I saw this yesterday and my blood boiled: Marine’s dad ordered to pay protesters’ court fees–$16,510 to be exact.

The protesters are none other than Fred Phelps and his merry band of inbred family members who protest at military funerals with hateful, vile signs.  In full disclosure, I admit to a special contempt* of Phelps and his ilk: not only are they notorious jerks who mar the farewell of fallen soldiers and distress wives, husbands, children, mothers and fathers while they’re at it, but the cult-y Phelps family is also known to bring their special brand of hate-spewing “faith” to protest at Catholic churches. 

(*I will go to Confession, promise.)

Al Snyder, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, sued the Phelps clan after they protested his son’s funeral, of which he said:

It was like kicking you in the face when you’re laying on the ground.

He won an $11 million settlement which he had hoped would bankrupt the freaks and prevent any more heartache at military funerals. 

They appealed, and Snyder has now been ordered to pay their court costs.

According to the AP article, Snyder is already struggling to come up with the filing costs for taking the case to the Supreme Court. 

Please help if you can. 

More info from the family Facebook page here.

I have to remind myself that for all the evil the Phelps freaks spawn with their protests, there are others who shield military families with love and respect.  

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has more.

Who knew? Maxine is conservative!

H/T: Hillbuzz.

Tea Party protester arrested for threats to Representative?

Nope.

After a week of media “reports” on the threats to Democrat Socialists and their ilk for socializing one-sixth of our economy, the first arrest comes from …

wait for it…

a crazy who threatened a REPUBLICAN House member and his family …

and called him “greedy.”

For opposing Obamacare.

Let me wager a guess, just a small one, but this person isn’t a Tea Partier, no? 

And his party affiliation is most likely Democrat Socialist, yes?

3-2-1- Waiting for someone to argue this nut was a Tea Partier–it’ll make as much sense as the MSM hyping that Amy Bishop and the Texas flier nut were.

Pogue-in-Chief Pep Talk

What do you do when you’re sinking in the polls?  Act like a real President should.  How incredibly sad that we know he doesn’t mean a damn word of it:

The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. You don’t quit, the American armed services does not quit. We keep at it. We persevere.

Snort.  H/T Gateway Pundit who has audio of cut-and-run-in-Iraq advocate Obama.

The Democrats Socialists should be scared: where’s the love they expected once the bill-we-need-to-pass-in-order-to-know-what’s-in-it?  It ain’t forthcoming.   Conventional wisdom dictates the seven months until the midterm elections is a political eternity and the force behind the dissent will wither and die by then: Hugh Hewitt argues that these are times to ditch conventional wisdom.   He writes:

After all, look what happened to the Tea Party movement born almost a year ago.

Oh, that’s right. The Tea Party movement didn’t dissipate over the past 12 months. It grew. Enormously. Dissatisfaction with Obamacare didn’t decline. It mounted. The president’s popularity has been steadily trending down despite more than two score and 10 speeches.

The “benefits” of Obamacare will of course kick in. Just as the election rolls into view, “open season” for employee health benefits will appear for major employers across the country, and then … who knows?

Speaking of which, the CEOs of companies who dared humiliate the Democrats Socialists in charge by doing what they’re legally bound to do have been summoned to the Hill to be grilled by the Thugocratic Leaders of the Democrat Socialist Party.   In case  you missed it, John Deere, Catepillar, Verizon and others have “restate[d] their earnings in light of the higher tax burden on their long-term retiree health liabilities” in the quarter (that would be this one) the new law (the Obamacare Fraud Act) took effect.   Translation: Obamacare just sucked hundreds of billions of dollars out of our struggling economy.  

 

Already!  Hopenchange!  Millions of Seniors get the shaft!

  

OMG the movers arrive in a month?! tab dump

Forgive the light posting from a slightly stressed out military wife.  That season is upon us: PCSing.  Or, for the uninitiated, Permanent Change of Station.  Last time, pjToddler was but a dream.  Now the reality of moving cross-country with a toddler who thrives in routine when we have yet to find a place to live has dawned.  Fully.  Gulp.  Any moving with a toddler tips out there? 

 

Fellow Steynette (he’s on Rush now) Hyacinth Girl looks at Obamacare and the infantile mentality it confers.  H/T: Pundette.

 

Instapundit’s mailbag brings a delightful lesson in civility.

George Will takes a look at birthright citizenship and how it induces illegal immigration.  Did the founders make a mistake?  No.  Read it.

 

Will Obami efforts to Balkanize us backfire?  

 

I can hear the Mullahs laughing: Obama best bud Valerie Jarrett says Iran will back down.  

 

Why can’t the GOP embrace this?  Why we need the flat tax.  

 

 

 

 

It’s intentional, Peggy.

Noonan’s column in this morning’s WSJ compares Washington powers-that-be to passers by who see the angry hive and decide to poke it with a stick.  She begs the “[t]he administration [which] is full of people who are so bright, and led by one who is very bright” to STOP. POKING. THE. COUNTRY. WITH. THE. DAMN. STICK. because “something bad” is coming.

Noonan misses the whole point.  The-so-smart-administration is out to find as many sticks as they can.  It’s intentional, Peggy.  The Obami are fundraising off of the supposed angry-mob-of-conservative threats.   Never let a crisis go to waste. 

She writes:

What we need now in our leaders is the knowledge that there is so much that is tearing us apart as a nation and that the great project now is to keep us together, to hold us together as much as possible

Like so many other supposed level-heads, she really doesn’t get it.  It’s intentional.  The more divided we are, the harder it will be to come together to oust the Obami.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature.  But the Obami are capable of Cloward-Piven strategies to socialize as much of our country as possible.  Transformative politics, indeed.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Or in this case, the foreclosure or the modification leading to default?

From the WaPo: Obama readies steps to fight foreclosures, particularly for unemployed.

Why worry about the economy and the lack of jobs, right?  Two years of unemployment lined up, free healthcare, and now–you don’t have to pay for your house, either?

How inconvenient that this comes out the same day: over half of the folks who have “modified” their mortgages with government help have still ended up in default.   Why bother making house payments–how passé–when that free Obama money will make it like Christmas for everyone.

From Bloomberg:

Modifications are “clearly not working well and it’s not a surprise,” said Sam Khater, a senior economist at First American CoreLogic in Tysons Corner, Virginia. “It’s pointless to rewrite these loans because they’re underwater.”

So what does Obama do? Double-down on something not working, of course:

The Obama administration plans to overhaul how it is tackling the foreclosure crisis, in part by requiring lenders to temporarily slash or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for many borrowers who are unemployed, senior officials said Thursday.

Banks and other lenders would have to reduce the payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower’s income, which would typically be the amount of unemployment insurance, for three to six months. In some cases, administration officials said, a lender could allow a borrower to skip payments altogether.

How about we just eliminate everyone’s mortgage? Free housing for all!  I’m sure Fidel would approve–he already praised the miracle of Obamacare.  Why would Cubans bother to risk life and limb escaping the horrors of socialism if they only get more of the same here?

God help us all.