Radioactive Communist Zombies

Obama's Hypocrisy on Climate Change

(Hat Tip The Corner)

Remember when then-candidate Barack H. Obama said:

We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.

But apparently the President doesn't practice what he preaches.  As the New Yuck Times reports:

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

 

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.

Well, first of all, Ronald Reagan wouldn't take off his suit jacket in the Oval Office no matter how warm it got in the summer out of respect for the place.  Now Obama is in his shirt sleeves.

 

But most of all, Obama lectures us serfs on where to set our thermostats and he's growing orchids in the Oval Office (not literally of course).

 

Seems to me he, like so many liberals, knows what's best for you, but doesn't want to do it himself.

 

Ten Stupid Things Liberals Do to Mess-up Everyone’s Life.

I wrote this a long time ago.  But with Democrats firmly back in charge, I think it's good to remind ourselves of some basic truths:

1. Stupid Economics: Liberals don’t understand some of the basic facts of economics.  Fact one, the law of diminishing returns and, fact two, that everything, and I mean everything, has a cost (often expressed as “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”).  Liberal thinking requires one to believe that human-devised solutions can solve problems at little or no cost.  But the law of diminishing returns guarantees that there are no perfect solutions, and no free lunch means there are only tradeoffs of various costs.  The law of diminishing returns works when you clean your house.  An hour’s work can make a large difference.  The next hour, the results get less.  If you decide you’ll spend as much time as needed to have as clean a house as possible eventually you’ll be scrubbing the individual carpet fibers, working very hard, and not making much progress (diminishing returns) meanwhile the dishes are piling up in the sink and you have no time to work to earn money to eat (the costs).  Which leads us to . . .

2. Stupid Priorities: If having the cleanest house possible regardless of the cost is a stupid goal because of the law of diminishing returns, imagine the goal of having the cleanest environment possible.  And yet that is what liberals want: perfect solutions.  After TWA 800 exploded Vice President Al Gore stated that no matter how safe air travel was, it must be made safer.  In other words, it must be made so safe that no plane ever crashes (and even then it could be safer: people still might stub their toe getting on or off a plane).  There is no way, short of grounding all aircraft, to eliminate all airplane crashes and yet the man most likely to succeed Bill Clinton thinks this is possible.  This is a typical example of liberal stupid priorities for not only is it impossible, but trying to do it will invariably do more harm than good as resources are diverted from useful projects (like improving and updating the air traffic control system which would have a significant effect on airline safety) to stupid ones like attempting to build a plane that is immune to the laws of physics.  This is again not realizing that there is a point of diminishing returns as you approach the asymptote of perfection.  But the liberal worldview is one of absolutes.  You don’t eliminate as many plane crashes as economically feasible, but all.  And for crying out loud, you don’t have poverty because that’s not compassionate.

3. Stupid Compassion: Jesus said the poor will always be with us.  To a liberal, that’s just not compassionate.  We can eliminate poverty, hang the cost, just like we can make the environment sparkly clean (as if it ever were) and stop planes from obeying the laws of gravity.  To accept poverty is not compassionate.  The problem is the very people they are attempting to help become dependent on their largess.  Then the question becomes: is it compassionate to breed dependency?  Is it compassionate to give an alcoholic a drink?  In both cases the answer is no.  But liberals don’t think in those terms.  Where, however, is their compassion for the child forced into poverty because their desire to save some spotted owl destroyed her father’s job?  They’d probably accuse you of intolerance if you point that out.

4. Stupid Tolerance: The bastard child of compassion is tolerance.  Liberals want society to tolerate an awful lot.  There is hardly a deviance the left doesn’t think everyone should tolerate.  Yes, you should tolerate that “homeless” man chasing you down the street demanding money.  Only an intolerant bigot (and bigotry is on their short-list on intolerables) doesn’t want openly gay men as their son’s scout leader.  And we should tolerate the criminal because it’s not his fault, its society’s fault.  And that’s an attitude that leads to . . .

5. Stupid Crime Control: To liberals, the only bad guys are businessmen, gun owners, and Hitler (who they once made “peace in our time” with).  So instead of dealing harshly with wrongdoers they want to just get along.  Since it’s society’s fault, the criminal needs only to be rehabilitated.  Meanwhile, the “rehabilitated offender” goes out and harms another person -- I mean “re-offends” -- over and over and over again.  And where, you may ask, is the liberal compassion for the victims of these criminals?  Not on their radar screen; they have offenders to save and rights to protect because liberals very much believe in . . .

6. Stupid Rights: Stupid rights go beyond “you have the right to remain silent.” Liberals have made up rights out of whole cloth.  Felons have the right to cable TV; women have the right to murder inconvenient offspring.  And everyone has the right to “a living wage job,” health care, and sex without responsibility.  They believe that if everyone got all they are “entitled” to then social problems will disappear.  After all, we are all born angels and if our self-esteem is just lovingly maintained we will become happy, healthy adults. Which is the basis for all liberal education failures for the past 30 years, or what is really . . .

7. Stupid Education: Children are not born angels and corrupted by society.  They are born barbarians and, it is hoped, civilized by society.  I have three boys, I know this one from personal experience.  But not liberals, who believe in the angels theory.  And they base their education monopoly (read: public education) on it.  If only you don’t bruise the poor psyche of the child he (like the “rehabilitated offender”) will become a productive member of society.  So education becomes “feel good about yourself” not “learn this or else.”  They don’t realize that self-esteem comes from accomplishment, not babying (The time in school I felt best about myself was when I earned an “A” from the toughest chemistry teacher in the free world).  But liberals are smart enough to disregard 50,000 years of what’s worked for their pet theories, something I call . . .

8. Stupid Elitism: Liberals are so much smarter than the rest of us (just ask them).  They are so much smarter than everyone who’s ever lived since man climbed down from the trees (apple in hand), that if they decide that paying people to be poor will eliminate poverty, by god, it will.  If they decide lowering the costs of committing a crime by rehabilitating instead of punishing will eliminate crime, you can take it to the bank.  If they decide they can keep planes in the sky, stop global fill-in-the-blank-crisis-of-the-week, educate children with warm, fuzzy feelings, then they can.  And if you don’t share their beliefs, then you’re just some dumb idiot who needs their compassionate tolerant meddling in your life which leads to . . .

9. Stupid Meddling: Since liberals are smarter than you, you should just let them run the show.  They should decide how well your eggs are cooked, how safe your car is and what speed you should drive it, if you should drive it or take the bus, how many outlets you should have in your house, how many fire exits, how many smoke detectors, what your water heater is to be set to, what type of clothing your child should wear to bed, what medicines you take, how many and what kind of firearms you should own (zero, ultimately), where and when you can smoke, and how much water your toilet flushes or . . .

10. Stupid Toilets: Thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 1992 you can not (legally) buy a toilet in the United States of America -- the land of the free and home of the three extra flushes -- that will do the job in one flush.  Because a liberal decided you need to save water.  You don’t save water of course, just like planes still fall out of the sky and there’s still poverty and crime.  You flush three, four times to do the job of one flush.  (And don’t get me started about those low-flow showerheads.)  Liberals say they want to keep the government out of our bedrooms.  Yeah, so it can set up shop in the bathroom.

The only solution to this and the other stupid things liberals do to mess up everyone’s lives is to vote them out of power.  No matter how many flushes it takes.

Economist Agree: Stimulus Doesn't Stimulate

The Cato Institute printed a full page ad (PDF file) in the New Yuck Times today in the form of an open letter to President Obama.  The gist of the ad:

More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

It was signed by over 200 economists including Walter Williams of George Mason University, Genevieve Briand of Eastern Washington University, Jonathan Karpoff and Charles Nelson of the University of Washington (Go Dawgs), and  Doug Wills of University of Washington Tacoma.

So I'm not the only one saying stimulus doesn't stimulate.

LIberal Christmas in January

Well, the gazillion dollar stimulus bill passed the House of Representatives.  Too bad, for it will do little to stimulate the economy.  For one thing, government spending doesn't stimulate the economy because the money first has to come out of the economy as either taxes or debt.

And the other reason is: 88% of the spending is pork and liberal wish lists that have been pent up for the past 40 years.  From an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal today:

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

But there's money for infrastructure right?  Yeah, a little:

 Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.

Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus.

And a great deal of the "stimulus" is paying your taxpayer dollars to someone else:

[S]ome $252 billion is for income-transfer payments -- that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There's $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax. While some of that may be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren't job creators.

Because no poor person ever gave anyone a job (see here).

But what we have is a liberal Christmas in January if this passes the Senate as is (or even if modified slightly).  Liberals have forty years of pent up spending to do, and they aren't going to let a little thing like the fact that stimulus has never worked (viz: Great Depression) get in their way.

Obama: Keep Politics to a Minimum

President Barack Obama today urged Republicans to "keep politics to a minimum" while passing the stimulus boondoggle.  Or, in what he really wants is "shut up and go along":

Obama said he is "absolutely confident" that compromises can be reached, "but the key right now is to make sure we keep politics to a minimum."

. . . Obama added his proposal is "just one leg in a multi-legged stool." He also wants Congress and his administration to develop tighter regulations, more controls on the release of money to help shore up financial institutions and greater coordination with other countries. 

And he doesn't want Republicans getting in his way.

But politics, that is healthy discussion and work on compromises is exactly what is needed.  Not everyone in the country voted for Obama and not everyone in the country has a Democrat Representative (at least not until they change enough voting laws to ensure enough fraud to make it so).  Those people's views deserve to be aired and debated and affect how the stimulus (and their taxpayer dollars) are spent.  It's the job of the loyal opposition to not shut up, but to present clear alternatives to the railroading of this trillion dollar payoff to unions, teachers, and possibly ACORN. 

Payoff to ACORN in Stimulus Plan

You remember ACORN, the group that fraudulently registers voters and pushed for banks to make risky loans?  Well, since they helped so many Democrats get elected, they deserve something for their efforts, right?  Like taxpayer dollars?

According to Fox News, that's just what's going to happen:

Republican lawmakers are raising concerns that ACORN, the low-income advocacy group under investigation for voter registration fraud, could be eligible for billions in aid from the economic stimulus proposal working its way through the House. 

Now how is that stimulus?  It ain't, it's a payoff to a group that supports very liberal causes and helps get Democrats elected even if it means fraudulent votes.

As Mike Pence (R-Indiana) said today:

The Democrat bill won't stimulate anything but more government and more debt.  The slow and wasteful spending in the House Democrat bill is a disservice to millions of Americans who want to see this Congress take immediate action to get this economy moving again.

But that is the natural Democrat instinct: spend other people's money and give it to those who will support them.  This whole stimulus boondoggle is little more than that, anyway.

Business Climate and Climate Change

Two juxtaposed headlines that came up earlier today on MyYahoo page:

U.S. business climate worst in 27 years

And:

Obama begins reversing Bush climate policies

The first is a Reuters story that begins:

U.S. firms are experiencing the worst business conditions in 27 years as the year-long recession worsens, a survey showed on Monday.

The National Association of Business Economics' (NABE) quarterly industry poll found that the economic slump worsened in the fourth quarter and the majority of respondents expected gross domestic product to contract at a faster pace in 2009.

This as the economy continues to hemorrhage jobs.

Meanwhile, what is Obama doing?  Saddling the economy with more regulations, more costs, more disincentives to grow business.  And he's directly attacking the auto industry which according to the BLS employs 839,000 people.  From the second story:

 U.S. President Barack Obama began reversing the climate policies of the Bush administration on Monday, clearing the way for new rules to force automakers to produce more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars.

The president told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider immediately a request by California to impose its own strict limits on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for contributing to global warming.

Which just gives car makers more burdens to overcome in addition to all the others (CAFE, Union contracts, low demand).

This probably is the pattern the Obama Administration will follow: your job, your business, your well-being will be secondary to the need to appear green and "save the planet" from "climate change" (which the climate does all the time anyway).

AP Cheerleading for Obama

I love this headline from the Associate Press (AP):

Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisive stands

The story opens:

Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.

"What an opportunity we have to change this country," the Democrat told his senior staff after his inauguration. "The American people are really counting on us now. Let's make sure we take advantage of it."

This after Obama basically told Republicans to go along with his plans because, as he put it, "I won."

What is "divisive" is in the eye of the beholder.  I think his trillion dollar boondoggle spending for "stimulus" is pretty divisive.   I think his plans to regulate carbon are pretty divisive.  I think pretty much all he's going to do is divisive.

So the AP comes out cheerleading for Obama.  Why is that not surprising? 

Small Businesses Face Hostile Environment From Obama Government

Tristan Yates writes for Pajamas Media that small businesses can expect no help from the Obama Administration.  And, in fact, the Obama Administration will do a lot to hurt small businesses.

According to the Census Bureau, business with less than 100 employees employ about 41.7 million people or more than one third of all employed persons.  So it's not as if small businesses aren't vital to the economy.  Yet the Obama administration is doing everything it can to put obstacles in their way.  As Yates writes:

Small businesses are facing the most hostile climate in a generation, and it is not just the slumping economy and credit crunch.  With the quiet scrapping of the $3,000 job creation tax credit — which was “never set in stone” according to a senior Obama adviser –  there is no more small business tax relief on the horizon . . .

Instead, American small businesses face not only tax increases on individual income, dividend income, and capital gains as the 2003 tax cuts expire, but new environmental fees and regulations, health care “pay or play” mandates, and a significant expansion of new “rights” for workers that may well include compulsory unionization. 

And small businesses have no clout on either Capitol Hill or with the Administration unlike their large competitors and groups like unions and ACORN who helped get Democrats elected.  So we will have the Employee Free Choice Act and the Lily Ledbetter trail lawyer employment act and comparable worth and environmental or safety regulations on pretty much every activity a small business can engage in.

Yates has a solution to this problem, too:

Stop the planned tax hikes that disproportionately hit small businesses and their owners. Stop turning small businesses into tax collectors and social workers.  And stop the bailouts — after all, new businesses can never succeed if their competitors are subsidized indefinitely.

I couldn't have put it better. 

UFO at Obama Inauguration?

Apparently something flat and fast was captured by a CNN camera in Washington DC before the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.  And as the U.K. Daily Mail reports:

[A] small dark object is seen whizzing past the Washington Monument . . .

Well, maybe the Pluto Press and Daily Shopper wanted to cover the inauguration.  Or it's a fast moving bird.