Global Warming Cooling

      First there were the emails between "scientists" at England's East Anglia University in their Hadley Institute on Climate, showing collusion to ignore and hide data that disproved man-made global warming. Then there was the bombshell release of computer code for the weather models used as the main source of proof for global warming, which had the desired results pre-programmed into the models. Now Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, has stated that there is no evidence to support the concept of man-made global warming. He also said the purveyors of such politically motivated nonsense use scare tactics and pseudo-science to push their agenda.
     Any fool can look at the unusual, but not record-breaking cold, some of the country has endured this Winter, and realize that global warming is the biggest hoax perpetrated on man since, well since ever. The gig is up for the global warming crowd, but yet they still insist on trying to convince the gullible that somehow everything weather related is the result of global warming. The worrisome part is that government is now filled with global warming devotees whose aim it is to enact legislation designed to redistribute wealth and add to the ill-gotten gains of climate hucksters like Al Gore.
     The real issue of logic that defenders of global warming have a hard time answering is one of data. None of their dire predictions of the last 30 years about the effects of global warming have come true. Even if their belief in global warming was based on data, records on climate only include the last hundred years or so. With the earth being billions of years old, 100 years of data is hardly representative. And the data we do have disproves man-made climate change, since most extreme shifts in climate occurred before industrialization, which is currently being blamed for the non-existent shift in the modern climate.
     Actually, in the last 15 years or so there has been no appreciable change in global temperatures, even according to data from the Church of Man-Made Climate Change. Things have gotten so desperate for the global warming folks that they are saying that no change over the last 15 years is proof of man-made climate change. But global warming is illustrative of the Lefts manufactured crisis for the purpose of growing government control in the lives of individuals. It is sold to the American public on the basis of emotion. They convince people that the planet is suffering from man's presence and that the individual has the power to "save" the earth.
     The public is beginning to wake up to the fraud of man-made climate change. With more prominent scientists like Patrick Moore sounding the alarm bell of reason that those promoting global warming are more dangerous than any effects they claim the phony crisis may have on our world, the truth is slowly turning the Al Gorians into history's biggest clowns. But what has caused the cooling of global warming more than anything else, is the cold hand of reality slapping the chapped faces of those who have had to shovel many feet of global warming from their driveways this Winter.
    

Arizona Legislation Was Anti-Discriminatory

     The new religious freedom bill in Arizona unfortunately is not going to become the law of the land in that state. Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the legislation under duress from radical homosexual groups. The legislation, and the concepts of religious freedom contained within, offended "gay rights" activists so much that they had to lie about the bill by characterizing it as discriminatory. As per usual, the Left is 180 degrees out of phase with reality.
      The legislation would have actually ensured that the religious beliefs of business owners would not be violated by the forced participation in activities that offend their moral and religious sensitivities. Sound familiar? It should, it is the very same moral correctness used to write the first amendment to the United States constitution. Of course, for the Left, there is no religious freedom, unless the religion is Leftism. And there is no freedom of speech unless it is in support of their religion.
     The vetoed legislation in Arizona, that would have protected citizens religious freedom, was   heralded by the Left as "anti-gay." But the Arizona legislation did not even mention homosexuals, let alone any restrictions placed upon them. But the Left sees any permission for persons to practice their faith, when it does not condone and celebrate their agenda, as discriminatory. The Left can not tolerate any moral conscience or individual thought, all must march to the beat of the group think drummer.
     If a baker has long-held religious beliefs that prevent him from making a wedding cake for a same sex couple, and the right to practice those beliefs are upheld by law, what is the detriment to any same sex couple? They are not being prevented from having their cake made by a baker who does not have such beliefs. By forcing the baker to make the cake, the radical homosexual community and others on the Left, have placed their rights above those of the baker. This is antithetical to the live-and-let-live spirit of the constitution.
      The Arizona situation has once again illustrated the Lefts unwillingness to practice constitutional principles, and its live-and-let-live tenet. It is not enough for those on the Left to engage in the sacraments of their corrupt faith, they aim to impose those sacraments on the whole of American society. They will bully, intimidate, lie, and cheat to bring to fruition their twisted vision of Utopia. A Utopia where thoughts no longer belong to the individual but to the State. A Utopia where religious faith is no longer in competition with Leftist secularism for the heart and soul of a nation. A Utopia that replaces virtue with vice and freedom with the chains of conformity.

Recent Military Reduction: A Deriliction Of Duty

     Of all the damage that Barack Obama has done to this country in the arenas of economic policy, racial harmony, and constitutional government, none has been so dangerous as his foreign policy. In  just five short years the Obama administration has transformed the United States from lone super-power status with the ability to influence world events for the good, to a whimpering bench-rider confined to the sidelines. This "accomplishment" not only portends troubled waters for the U.S., but for all the nations of the world who depend on its leadership in the cause of liberty.
     Many on the Left and the Right criticized those of us who said from the beginning that the number one goal of Barack Obama was to manage America's decline. But now, with the decline well under way, only a fool or an Obama supporter would deny it. With the economy barely producing at half its normal pace, the greatest health care industry in the world in the process of becoming just another government nightmare, and now with the recent announcement from Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel that he is cutting the military by twenty percent, the triumvirate of America's destruction is complete.
     In his announcement, Secretary Hagel said that it was the end of United States military dominance in the world. This move to deplete our defenses, and the announcement to our enemies that we are making ourselves weaker, is also a signal to our allies that they can no longer depend on a strong America to defend the cause of freedom. Barack Obama and his fellow travelers believe that United States dominance is the reason for conflict in the world, not the discouragement of it. Ronald Reagan once said, "No war of the last hundred years has been fought because America was too strong."
     The real tragedy of the Obama presidency is not so much the historic level of debt, the chronically ill economy, or the extra-constitutional president. It is that for the first time in the modern era, and maybe in the entirety of this country's history, we have a president that is outwardly disdainful and hostile to the founding principles of this country and is actively working to mitigate them. Barack Obama has made no secret of the fact that he does not think the liberty of Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson is fair or equitable. That is why from the beginning he said he wants to "fundamentally transform" this country.
      The recent reduction in our military strength is a fundamental transformation from a federal government constitutionally bound to provide it, to an oligarchy that sees itself as unbound from 238 year old documents, the guiding principles of liberty, or any sense of duty to common decency. It is this dereliction of duty by the current president that dishonors the office, the nation, and liberty itself.          

The Public Hazard Of Racial Preferences

     The immoral and corrupt practice of racial preferences inherent in so many of the Lefts instruments, like affirmative action, has begun to rear its ugly head in the necessary services provided by our cities. Not only are these practices dangerous to the values of our constitution, but in some instances they are also a danger to public safety. Two recent examples from Cleveland, Ohio illustrate my premise.
     Last year, multiple Cleveland police officers were involved in a high speed chase that resulted in them having to shoot and kill two defendants. The criminals were crack addicts who lead the officers on the high speed chase, used their car as a weapon against police, and led police to believe that they were armed. For their part in protecting the community from these animals, some officers were suspended, reprimanded, or both. Police chief McGrath was promoted to city safety director for choosing to bow to the gods of political correctness instead of defending his officers.
     Because of this police chase last year, a man was recently given immunity from prosecution for drunk driving because he was black. The gentleman was three times over the legal limit and had a bottle of booze on his lap when he totaled his girlfriend's car into a tree. He had received two Driving While Intoxicated charges prior to this incident. But because of the Cleveland police department's new policy that blacks will not be charged with serious crimes when it can be avoided, the drunk driver got off with nothing more severe than a failure to control citation. After the shooting incident last year, the city of Cleveland has determined that it needs to assuage its collective racial guilt by bestowing blanket immunity on a segment of residents based on the color of their skin.
     Another example of a threat to public safety designed to please the gods of political correctness, is the ambulance service in the inner-city of Cleveland. In one district alone in the month of January there were over 10,000 runs. The population of the entire city is only 380,000. The reason for the extremely high call volume from the inner-city is that paramedics and dispatchers are not allowed to tell anyone that they may not be in need of emergency services. To do so might be seen as racist, since a vast majority of the city's residents are black. So therefore they must take every call, from literally having to clean up someone who has had an unscheduled bowel movement, to a woman who needs a ride to the drug store to pickup her birth control pills.
     This misuse of services is encouraged by government. I was told by a paramedic that some of the persons calling them for innocuous things, like taking them to a doctor's appointment, are doing so because Medicaid requires its beneficiaries to expend the total of their benefits or they will be reduced the following year. Many of the over 10,000 calls in this one district were repeat calls from the same "patients." When every frivolous call is given the same attention as real emergencies, the system becomes overtaxed and its efficiency suffers, and so do the real patients with real medical emergencies.
     The Lefts political correctness of racial preferences costs this nation more than tax dollars and extemporaneous regulations. In the case of Cleveland, Ohio, it could very well cost lives. By allowing the man who wrapped his car around a tree driving drunk, to keep driving legally on the streets of Cleveland, the city and its new racial preference policy endanger the lives of law-abiding citizens every day. And by not separating the real emergencies from frivolous calls, the city once again has allowed its duty to political correctness to override the responsibility to its citizens. The real tragedy is that I do not believe that Cleveland, Ohio is alone in its practice of unequal protection under the law. I fear that these kinds of practices have become all too commonplace, leaving those who pay the bills in this country woefully under represented in city government as well as on a national level.

The Lefts Deconstruction Of Community

     In order for the Left to impose the oppression of their policies, it is essential that they deconstruct reality and truth. God being the foundation of truth, and nature having irreversible realities of its own, it is important for the Left to convince as many persons as possible that there is no truth of either God or human nature. The Left knows that by destroying the culture's belief in both God and human nature, it will become more centered on government and less on the individual, family, and community. The only truth remaining is the false truth of big government.
     Barack Obama and other committed Leftists speak of community, but then implement policies that encourage behaviors that are detrimental to the community. The individual who does the most for his community is the one who makes good life decisions based on virtue. He who lives healthy, works every day, and supports himself and his family, has done more for his community than any government program. Creating individual wealth is the most moral and complete way to help one's community. The Lefts idea of community is for fewer and fewer people to contribute more than their fair share to government coffers controlled by politicians, who then create programs of dependence which enable an ever growing percentage of the population in their bad decisions.
     It is this desire to drive society ever closer to the parentage of big government, and away from the independence of local community, that makes so-called community organizers like Barack Obama the complete antithesis of community. These "community organizers" do not so much organize communities as they do deconstruct them. They preach, not the sermon of communities depending on themselves to solve their problems, but a diatribe of class and race warfare with big centralized government playing the role of savior and saint. The community organizer's job, as well as that of all Leftists, is to draw strength from the community in order to empower government.
     Drawing strength from the community depends primarily on making it less Godly. Those who are God-centered are not inclined to be government-centered. God's absolutes contained within the nature of humans he created, has been replaced with the ever-changing "values" of big government that are the only sacraments of Leftism. When there are no absolutes, then the Left can fill the vacuum of virtues remaining with the politically advantageous.
     So the sanctity of marriage infused with religious values and thousands of years of human tradition, is replaced with the profanity that marriage is simply an official recognition of a relationship between persons who "love each other." The sanctity of life has been replace with the profanity of abortion when it is in the womb, and the profanity of "compassionate end-of-life counseling" when it becomes too old to be useful to the State. The sanctity of distinct male/female natures has become the profanity of self expression in contradiction to those natures. And the sanctity of liberty, given as a gift to humans from a loving God, has become the profanity of an overly activist government that has the audacity to believe in its own power to solve every problem. 
     The success that the Left has had in changing the American culture into a European Socialist one, comes as a result of their ability to destroy local communities. When the connections in a community are severed through multi-culturalism and constant class and race warfare, then all eyes turn to  authoritarian big government that is controlled by the ruling class.
    
    

Hit And Miss Conservatives

      There is one core behavior that separates the Democrat political class from that of their Republicant counterparts, i.e., motivation. Democrats are motivated by the greed of government authoritarianism in every policy decision, political campaign, and cultural battle in which they engage. Republicants on the other hand have lately been motivated by pure fear.
     When one examines the Republicant party's descent into the cavern of politics over principle, it becomes clear that a majority of the decisions they have made in the last 5 years have been out of fear. They are afraid of being called racists, so they do not vigorously oppose Barack Obama and his policies. They are afraid of being called sexists, and therefore they do not push their pro-life and pro-family agenda. They are afraid of being called bigots, so they talk about comprehensive immigration reform, in other words amnesty. They are afraid of being called crony capitalists, and so they do not vigorously defend the free market. They are afraid of being blamed for government shut downs, so they allow the nation to sink further into the pit of irretrievable debt.
     There has been a cancerous ethos making its way among many on the Right that informs them that opposing moderate Republicant office holders in the primaries with more conservative candidates is not wise. Their flawed thinking has them using the circuitous logic that as long as Republicants like Mitch McConnel and John Cornin agree with them 80% of the time, electing them is better than having a Democrat take the seats in congress that they currently occupy. I do not accept the eighty percent premise. A vote for raising the debt limit to whatever President Obama wants to spend of taxpayer money in the next 13 months, can not be weighted the same as a vote on some more innocuous issue. In other words, the moderate Republicants vote against conservative values when they demand a strong backbone, and for them when they require less courage. These are what I call Hit And Miss Conservatives.
     Conservative author and commentator, Ann Coulter, has apparently joined the ranks of the Hit And Miss Conservatives. She seems to have a personal vendetta against the Tea Party. She was recently on Sean Hannity's TV show and essentially said the Tea Party should shut up and sit down and let the establishment choose who is going to run for office in the Republicant party. Ms. Coulter's hurt feelings caused by Tea Party members illustrating her political slobbering over Chris Christie early in the 2012 campaign, may be the reason for her current displeasure with their opposition to moderate Republicants in congress.
      The Hit And Miss Conservatives' theory that more Republicants in congress automatically translates into public policy that is good for the country, is flawed. This theory is not born out by the Bush years, when Republicants had control and passed legislation like the prescription drug entitlement, campaign finance reform, and no child left behind. Additionally, they spent taxpayer dollars like drunken sailors and capped it all off with the TARP bailouts that seeded the trillion dollar Obama deficits.
     I contend that many on the Right, both in congress and the so-called conservative media, have allowed themselves to become more like Democrats. For them, getting elected is more important than changing the hearts and minds of the American public and convincing them of the folly of Leftist policies, and the virtue of conservative ones. They have chosen to take the path of least resistance, instead of engaging in the hard work of conservatism. The Hit And Miss Conservatives not only hurt the cause of conservatism, but they do not present the voting public with a  morally clear alternative to Leftism. The vacuum they create with their indecision is then filled with the empty promises, oppression, and vice of those on the Left. 

Ignorance Is Bliss For U.S. Stock Market

     In the capital city of Kiev in the Ukraine, the violence continues to escalate. In Syria, 130,000 Syrians have been killed by their own government and only 3% of Saddam's chemical and biological weapons have been eradicated under the recent Russian deal. Iran, also under the protection of Russia, is moving ever more closer to becoming nuclear-tipped, to the chagrin of both their Jewish and Arab neighbors. The International Monetary Fund has said that the crisis in emerging markets is getting worse. Domestically, job creation, such as it was, has come to a virtual standstill. U.S. companies have reported less than stellar earnings, with warnings of even worse results for the current quarter. Retail sales in both brick and mortar and online stores have plummeted, and manufacturing and home building have decreased more than they have at any time in the last 3-5 years. The U.S. stock market has decided to ignore all these facts and create its own world where it continues to plod ahead towards recent record highs.
     The Federal Reserve's nurse-maiding of the markets has turned the once great arbiter of the financial health of U.S. business into an empty haul of economic analysis. Where the market was once a leading indicator of either a bad or a good economy, it has become to the Fed like teenagers waiting at the stage door for their favorite pop idols to emerge with their latest pap on vinyl. Good news is now bad news, and bad news is good. All because a failing economy makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will employ the teat of free money for those in the market to suckle.
     The market, helped in their delusion of a growing economy by the Federal Reserve, is like a run away train that has broken free of the tracks of sanity, common sense, and hard data. And like a run away train, the market is eventually going to come to rest, not so gently I might add, into a mountain of economic realities. The more honest economic analysts have made the bold diagnosis that we are heading back into recession. This is considered heresy by the Obama administration and their lapdog media. A case in point is the way in which they have attacked Doug Elmendorf, head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Mr. Elmendorf and his organization have had the audacity to point out the millions of jobs that will be lost in the ensuing years because of ObamaCare, and the economic certainty of job loss that raising the minimum wage will cause. 
     The fragility of the markets delusion is constructed of the very thin veil of monetary policy implemented by dilettantes who know little about the economy of which they have taken the reins, never having actually worked in that economy. The devolution of the free market by the nine hundred pound gorilla of the federal government has skewed common sense in the markets, at least for the short term. But eventually, reality will come rushing back in like it always does to claim its rightful place at the head of the economic table. Causing great consternation among those who have been lulled into a false sense of security by the slippery tongues of politicians and the free money that is not so free coming from an economically feckless Federal Reserve. 
    

The Evil Empire Returns

     There are very few sure things in this life, and even fewer in the world of international politics. But I can say, without fear of contradiction, that at some point in the near future either Iran will attack Israel or Israel will attack Iran. The Obama administration, with its enabling of Russian power on the world stage, has almost insured that Iran will not abandon its nuclear ambitions, and its well vocalized intentions to try and destroy Israel.
     Using a rouge nation like Iran as its proxy in a war against the west is nothing new for Russia, and its predecessor, the Soviet Union. Two world wars were fought, to a great extent, because of Soviet manipulation of German leaders who believed they were destined to rule the world, or at least as much as they could. And the Soviets were willing to allow them to continue in that thinking as long as it benefited their purposes. The North Koreans were supplied and encouraged in their incursion into South Korea in the early 1950s by the Soviets, and North Vietnam was likewise encouraged to attack the South.
     Even the Gulf wars that we have fought in recent years had Soviet, err I mean, Russian fingerprints all over them. One of Saddam Hussein's biggest morale supporters and suppliers of material contraband against the sanctions in the 1990s was Russia. And now the Russians, helped by weak U.S. leadership in the region, have become the Middle East's puppet master, intent on crushing Israel. The embarrassing second-class world citizenship that Barack Obama has bestowed upon the United States in every situation from Libya to Syria, has Russia salivating at the ease with which they have been able to bring down American influence around the world.
     And recently Russian support of the Ukrainian government against reformers in that country has made the re-building of the Soviet empire more of a reality than at any other time in the last quarter century. Many experts surmise that if the Ukraine falls under Russian control, it will be a fait accompli that the rest of Eastern Europe will follow. The Evil Empire that Ronald Reagan was responsible for defeating will have risen out of the ashes of Barack Obama's inept foreign policy.
       The oppression of Eastern Europe, and perhaps beyond, will be the result of a world view shared by Barack Obama and others that the United States' influence is the source of conflict in the world. But what their flawed thinking does not account for is that tyranny has always been less likely to germinate in the soil of American influence. And oppression shrinks when in the presence of the sunlight of freedom and liberty cast by the United States of America. Sadly the source of that light has been deliberately muted by Barack Obama, and the shadow of the Soviet empire is growing as a result.

What Is Wrong With A Downton Abbey Economy?

     Lawrence Summers, former economic advisor to President Obama, recently stated that the U.S. is in danger of having a Downton Abbey economy. The popular PBS series tells the story of those who inhabit an English manor house at the turn of the twentieth century. Mr. Summers' comment is typical of the Left who hate wealth, unless it is their own, gained from the well of taxpayer dollars into which they freely and frequently dip their greedy little buckets. The fictional family who own Downton Abbey provide jobs to underclass Englishmen, as well as a better life than they would otherwise have. The family's wealth also supports the local economy with the many purchases necessary to keep the manor operating.
     All these facts are wasted on Leftists who believe that there is no legitimacy to wealth outside government's confiscation of it. Mr. Summers and his fellow Keynesians labor under the ridiculous formula that one equals two simply by virtue of having been touched by the heavy hand of government. Even though John Maynard Keynes' economic voodoo has been thoroughly discredited by history over the last 80 years, there are still those like Mr. Summers and his former boss, Barack Obama, that believe it can be used to stimulate a downtrodden economy.
     The basics of Keynesian economics is this: A man has $10,000 in the bank. Someone takes his money out of the bank and takes a cut for "administrative services." They return what is left, much less than the original amount, and tell the man he is wealther than before. This is the basis of the Left's government economic advocacy theory that has never worked, yet they still insist on its implementation. The reason is not because they do not know its inherent failure, but because success is not the goal, expanding the role and size of government is.
     The life "in service", as the English called domestic servants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as depicted in Downton Abbey, was a hard one to be sure. But working on a country estate, being well-fed and provided with medical attention when needed, was a better life than many servants' contemporaries, both in Great Britain and the United States. Many of them lived in squalid conditions in over-crowded cities with little food and no medical access. The structure in English manor houses allowed for the lowest of scullery maids to work her way up to housekeeper, and for the lowly hall boy to one day advance to the position of butler. The wages one could achieve in a manor house as a servant were very handsome indeed.
     Mr. Summers' comment is illustrative of the Lefts deliberate ignorance of the expansionism of free market principles over the economic contraction provided by government interference. The economy of Downton Abbey provided not only jobs and opportunities to the servants who worked there, but the money they spent in the broader economy created opportunity for those in the surrounding area. Of course, opportunity as an outcome of hard work, sans the heavy hand of government, is something that is kryptonite to Leftists who see it as vice and government dependence as a virtue.
      

He/She Is The Foundation Of Society

     It was the famous Russian author Anton Chekhov that once stated, "He/she is the machine that makes fiction work."  Expanded to its logical conclusion, fiction being a veiled representation of reality, he/she is the machine that makes civilized societies work. When the distinction between male and female is blurred or eliminated, and their unique characteristics which contribute beauty and meaning to life are drained of their importance, then the entire human experience of meaningful advancement is depleted.
     The distinction between male and female is one of the five distinctions that the Left tries to eliminate in society. According to Dennis Praeger, conservative author and radio talk show host, the other four distinctions are between God and man, man and animal, good and evil, and holy and profane. The one between men and women has been especially assaulted by the Left in the last couple of decades. And the assault continues with the announcement this week by Face Book that they have expanded their sex classifications for profiles beyond male and female to also include fifty categories all together.
     The effort by the Left to remove distinctions between the sexes has its basis in their belief that human beings exist in and of themselves without any responsibility or adherence to natural laws or a defining principle. It is one of the main tenets of Leftism that there is no entity, ethos, value, or concept that is greater than the selfish needs of the individual. This poisonous thinking is what leads Leftists to claim that every set of behaviors, whether exhibited by an individual or a group of individuals, is equal, and no set of principles is superior.
     It is the Lefts inability to see distinctions, especially between male and female, that prompts them to advocate for public policy that is destructive to the progress of humans as a higher species, capable of spiritual pursuits. When the natural distinction between male and female is obliterated, the very foundations of civilized society like marriage and child-rearing are made to crumble. And a society that actively encourages its members to redefine nature itself can no more survive as a culture than a bird in the depths of the sea, or a fish in the waterless environs of high altitudes.
     He/she is what makes humankind survive, thrive and progress. Each contributing its unique gifts and characteristics, like the different parts of an engine, to create the well functioning mechanism of a proper society. Without the distinction between male and female, our culture devolves into nothing more than soulless beings with no reverence for or fidelity to a higher principle than that of the most basest of our instincts.
    

The Promise Of "Universal Health Care"

     While Obama administration officials have been crowing about what they say are the 3.3 million people who have signed up for health insurance using the government website, industry insiders say it is going to be extremely difficult for the government to meet its downwardly revised number of 6 million enrollees by March 31. But that is both the bureaucrats' advantage and the peoples detriment of big government programs like health care, i.e., its lack of competence and success can be buried by its ability to confiscate taxpayer dollars with which to paper over utter failure.
     The administration's figure of 3.3 million enrollees so far ignores the fact that their billion dollar website dos not have a mechanism for visitors to cancel their transaction. Without a cancel button, the website is counting as enrollees everyone who makes inquiries into health plans. To further obfuscate the real number of enrollees, is the twenty percent of people selecting plans who are not actually paying their premiums for those plans. Additionally, according to Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, two-thirds of those who are enrolling in ObamaCare plans were previously insured until the Affordable Care Act outlawed their plans and forced them to seek insurance on the government exchange.
     Many of those signing up for health insurance through the government website are finding that their plans come with very high deductibles, and they are electing not to pay their premiums. Some private insurers are reporting non-payment rates as high as thirty percent, and those who do not pay are not covered. This means that of the 3.3 million people the administration is claiming are "signed up" for insurance, only 2.6 million are actually legitimately covered.
     Some of those not paying their premiums are unwilling, while others simply think the payments will be automatically deducted from their paychecks or tax refunds. Still others are confused by the myriad ad hoc changes made to the law by the president and are under a false assumption that they have another year or more before they will have to actually pay for the coverage they believe has already begun. The confusion has left many persons without coverage, even after having signed up on healthcare.gov.
     ObamaCare has already failed miserably in its promised outcome of insuring the uninsured while allowing those previously insured to remain so. There are no current statistics that show how many people are actually uninsured, but even before the disastrous roll out of government-run health care last fall, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Affordable Care Act would leave 30 million Americans uninsured. I expect that number to increase significantly now that we have seen the malaise and malice of  the promise of "universal health care."

A Classic From The Obama Boneyard Of Abject Failures

     With an ever expanding mountain of Obama administration failures, sometimes the forgotten will rear their ugly heads, to the chagrin of every day Americans. I had such an experience when I walked into the dealership and asked the salesman, "Is there such an animal as a dependable used car for around four to five grand?" To which he sardonically responded, "Not since Cash for Clunkers."
     Ah yes, Cash for Clunkers, the use of confiscated taxpayer dollars that was suppose to create new car sales while at the same time remove older, earth-unfriendly vehicles from the road and save the planet. In the end, Cash for Clunkers made it much harder for middle and lower income persons to find reliable used transportation for a reasonable price. The program also made the availability of used parts scarce, and their cost increased by as much as three to four times. These unintended (maybe, maybe not) outcomes of the program were due to its mandatory crushing of vehicles submitted as "trades."
    While defenders of the program point to the 690,000 cars which were sold under it, Edmunds.com, the premier auto industry analysis and research firm, rightly points out that only 125,000 of those sales were incremental. The remaining sales were all ones that would have been executed without the program. In an industry that sells on average 14 to 15 million cars a year in the United States, 125,000 is less than a 1% increase.
     At a cost to taxpayers of $24,000 per vehicle sold, the increase in sales was not worth the investment. This is due to the fact that the average new car in 2009, the year of the program, sold for around $26,000. Even if one could count the $2000 per vehicle variance for the 125,000 additional vehicles sold, as "profit" to the economy, that only amounts to 250 million dollars. A drop in an ocean of an economy that generates 17 trillion dollars in economic activity per year. But even that amount is suspect as a benefit because it consisted of money forcibly removed from the economy only to be allowed to re-enter by the grace of government, a break even proposition at best.
     The Cash for Clunkers program is a microcosm of myriad Obama administration policies that will have long-lasting effects far outliving his tenure as president. It cost taxpayers more than any benefit received, raised the cost of products affected by government intrusion into the free market, and placed additional burdens on middle and lower income people. This, and not hope and change, is the real theme of the Obama reign.
    

Winter Weather Is Obama Pass

     You may have heard some people, mostly in the Obama administration and their annex on Wall Street, blame the recent Winter weather for the terrible economic data resulting from Obamanomics. The number of jobs created by this strangled economy has been anything but economically sustaining. But the last two months, the number of jobs created has been even more pathetic than it has been throughout the last five years. And you guessed it, the horrible numbers have been blamed on Winter weather, as if we have never had any before.
     In the world of the Obamaites  (those on Wall Street being solid members in that club having supported Barack Obama in both of his presidential bids by a ratio of 2 to 1), employers only add jobs in good weather. This theory about job creation being based on weather instead of business needs shows the lack of understanding of how business works by those on the Left, even those whose business is business.
     The weak retail sales for January (a drop of fourth tenths of a percent instead of the expected rise of one tenth) was also blamed on the Winter weather. On the surface this may make sense because people shop less when the roads are snow-covered. But Internet sales also dropped by three tenths of a percent, which can not be explained away by inclement weather. The decrease in Internet sales is a sign that the consumer is being financially squeezed by Obama policies like Health Care Reform.
     There is no doubt that the economy is slowing, even from the snails pace it has traveled the last 5 years. But it is to the benefit of those on Wall Street, both politically and financially, to feed the charade of a growing economy. Politically, because most of them being committed Leftists  can not allow their president to appear as the economic failure he is. And financially, their motivation is to pump up the economy to lure retail investors into ploughing their money into an artificially rising market.
      It has been educative of the Lefts complete disconnect from reality to watch the main stream financial media blame Winter weather for the endless stream of bad economic data. The almost pathological desire to make Barack Obama look like a success, and bestow him with achievement where there is none, is endemic of his entire life. There has always been someone there to change his Cs into As, to give him ownership of a bigger house than he could afford on his own, and to ordain him with titles he did not warrant by merit. But now instead of his benefactors being professors at Columbia, Tony Resko, and the faculty at Harvard respectively, it is the majority of the financial industry. And it is done so to the detriment of American liberty and prosperity in which the American people keep their wealth of freedom.

The Manly Deficit In The Republican Party

     There are very few men left among congressional Republicants, courage being one of the main tenets of manhood. After Thursday's vote on raising the debt limit unconditionally, I doubt very much there are any men left in Republicant leadership roles. Listening to talk radio yesterday after the vote made me want to find the nearest porcelain receptacle in which to regurgitate every vote I so foolishly donated to the Republicant party over the last 6 years.
     It is completely ineffable to any sane and right thinking person how it is that some in talk radio and in congress can possibly defend the passage of a bill giving President Obama carte blanche to spend as much as he wants over the next 13 months. The strategy that I heard Republicant congressmen and radio pundits alike express is that ObamaCare is going to be the issue in the upcoming mid-term elections, and nothing like a silly old debt limit is going to interfere with that.
     Hey guys! ObamaCare is the law, and as for repeal or replace, it is a dead issue. You and the rest of the scared modicans (moderate Republicans) saw to that last fall when you failed to muster the courage to defund it. Besides, ObamaCare becomes more and more part of the American landscape with each passing day as more Americans sign up and become dependent on subsidies. The ship to reverse ObamaCare has sailed, apparently with some Republicants on board waving foolishly, completely unaware they are headed out to sea.
     The Republicnats I have heard defending the unconditional debt limit bill say they are unable to achieve anything else because the president and congressional Democrats refuse to negotiate. Since when are principles only worth defending when your opposition is agreeable? And what kind of morally inverted world do these defenders of the "give them what they want because they will not negotiate" strategy live in which doing the right thing is only employed when it is comfortable to do so? In their world, courage is predicated upon the non-resistance of your foes. 
     Maybe the Republicants' options are limited because they do not control the senate or the Oval Office. But they could have passed a separate bill on Thursday to remove the ObamaCare subsidies for the insurance companies, with the stipulation that they would only pass a clean debt limit bill if the former bill was put to the floor of the senate for a vote. This would at least get Democrat senators on record voting for insurance company subsidies, and with many of them up for re-election, they may have just voted for the bill to remove them.
     Whether or not my preceding strategy would work is an unknown since the Republicant leadership did not even try it, or anything else for that matter. I think with the public's disgust over ObamaCare and the strain it is placing on the average American family, Republicants could have pushed Democrats with the aforementioned strategy to delay and/or rewrite major parts of the law. But alas, this would have taken the manly virtue of courage, which is sadly missing from Republicant leadership in congress.

John Boehner: History's Palest Pastel

     Speaker of the House John Boehner has once again shown his willingness to acquiesce to the demands of a lawless president in the vacuum of leadership with which he has managed the United States House of Representatives. Unable to gather support from the members of his own party, the feckless Speaker courted Democrats in the biggest act of betrayal since Benedict Arnold. The Speaker has blown to smithereens the Hasert Rule, which was a long-standing tradition by Republican speakers to not bring legislation to the floor without a majority of Republican support. Only 28 Republicants voted for the debt limit increase bill which gives President Obama the ability to borrow as much money as he wishes. One hundred and ninety nine sensible Republicants voted against the bill.
     With the passing of this legislation, the House of Representatives is now under de facto control of the Democrat party, without them having to win the mid-term elections this Fall. And because of John Boehner's betrayal of the American people and conservative values, the Democrat party will attain de jure control of the House this November. Dislike of the conservative wing of the Republicant party, and especially the Tea Party, by John Boehner and the rest of the Washington Republicant establishment, is stronger than their desire to do the right thing for the American people.
     The strategy, if one wishes to call it that, which can be harvested from the Speaker's comments is that the Democrats will own the fiscal irresponsibility of the debt limit increase. Mr. Boehner's ignorance, deliberate or not, of his opposition's tactics and their incestuous relationship with the main stream media which contributes to the successful execution of those tactics, seems to be the modus operandi of Republicant leadership that is hell bent on politically destroying their own party. With this latest insult to fiscal probity by Speaker Boehner, he has insured that a significant number of conservatives will sit out this Fall's mid-term elections.
     The unconditioned raise in the debt limit, along with the Ryan/Murray budget, have essentially neutered the Republicant party, causing them to become the "pale pastels" that Ronald Reagan warned against. Never before in this great nation's history have the people needed the "bold colors" of principled leadership in opposition to oppression. Unfortunately, the people have looked up from the weight of tyranny's yoke that has been placed upon them to catch a glimpse of history's palest pastel personified in John Boehner.

The Deliberate Ignorance Of The Markets

     In the practice of delusion over reality one will not find a more willing group of participants than the stock market. This collection of smart people who desire fallacy to fact and mediocrity to merit, react more out of adherence to group think than they do from a close examination of data. A case in point was the release last Friday of the employment number for the month of January, which was a dismal 113 thousand jobs added in the month. The analysts were expecting only a mildly less pathetic number of 180 thousand. The market, which if propelled by data and facts, should have gone down several hundred points, instead made gains across the major indices of about one percent.
     One of the favorite activities of the last few years by the market movers has been to rummage through the burnt out structure of what was once a thriving economy and find a charred nickel they can use to say that things are looking up. That charred nickel last Friday was the two tenths of a percentage point rise in the work force participation rate, which is still at a 35 year low. The work force participation rate is the percentage of working aged adults who are employed or actively seeking employment. The market analysts and participants saw the miniscule increase as a positive sign for the economy.
     But the work force participation rate did not increase because more people were working, but rather because more people were looking for work. This country, under the leadership of Barack Obama, has its largest group of unemployed individuals of working age than at any other time in our history. Over 90 million persons are unemployed in this country, a record of failure for the Obama administration and its policies.
     The reason for the slight uptick in the labor force participation rate recently is the laid off holiday workers, who are much more likely to participate in the labor force as "actively pursuing employment." I would not make the hasty determination that the uptick is a trend, we will see in the coming months if those newly unemployed persons either find jobs or become discouraged and remove themselves from the labor market, thus sending the labor force participation rate tumbling.
     It has been my contention that since the Federal Reserve has essentially pumped 3 trillion dollars of wealth into the markets over the last four years, market participants accept data from the government that has become ever more detached from reality. And the Federal Reserve's bond-buying spree has been an abject failure, according to their own metrics for ending the program, which have not been met. But they are smart enough to know that to continue it much longer would completely collapse the dollar. So once again, the people of this country will suffer from higher inflation, chronically high unemployment, and flaccid economic growth because of meddling by academics who have never worked in the private economy they have destroyed through their ignorance. 

Multi-Cultural Coke, Bob Dylan And Chrysler

     Being one that does not have the drivel of popular culture mainstreamed into my home through either broadcast, cable, or satellite television, I may appear to be "out of the loop." My further disinterest in sports makes me somewhat of an outcast among beer-guzzling sports fans of my sex. I do know enough to acknowledge that the Super Bowl was played over a week ago, and from what I have heard, my membership in the club of non-sports watchers stood me in fine stead, allowing me to miss not so much a contest but a practice session for the Seattle Seahawks.
     From what I have heard in the ensuing week since the Super Bowl, there were two commercials in particular that seemed to stir the passions of the game's spectators like the play on the field could not. One was the multi-cultural Coca-Cola commercial in which America the Beautiful was sung in different languages. The other commercial that seem to spark a minor controversy was the Chrysler ad in which singer/songwriter icon, Bob Dylan, played spokesman for the car manufacture.
     If I may, I will address these commercials in inverse order, dealing with the Bob Dylan commercial first. I read many criticisms of Mr. Dylan calling him a sellout for hawking cars for Chrysler Motors. It has always amused me that those that call celebrities "sellout" for receiving fair compensation for their endorsement, are the very people who do not have a marketable personality. And Bob Dylan is a man who is no stranger to being called a sellout. Those on the Left have been merciless when applying that term to Mr. Dylan over the last fifty years.
     They called him a sellout when he transitioned from "protest songs" to ones of a more personal nature. And the oppressive Left flipped out further when Bob decided to expand his music using electrical instruments. He was called a sellout when he became a born again Christian, although I do not understand how one makes the case that God is somehow analogous to a commercial enterprise. Sellout is a term applied to celebrities by envious nobodies for making a profit from years of hard work building a persona that has value to the commercial market. Truly a cardinal sin, especially among Leftists who choose not to work so hard.
     The second Super Bowl commercial requiring my comment is the Coca-Cola ad with America the Beautiful being the target of sacrilege by being sung in different languages. It has become very popular among the multi-cultural Left to extinguish the embers of our national culture and balkanize the country. When a people do not have a common language and culture, greatness will allude them and their society will devolve into disparate groups that are linked together by nothing but dependence on government. Far from bringing people together as it claims, multi-culturalism divides people by destroying their national commonality.
     In the final analysis, Bob Dylan was making a living from his work, just like a plumber, electrician, or anyone who works for a living. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, is the true sellout, selling out to the tin gods of political correctness and multi-culturalism.  
    

Republicants Setup For Failure In Mid-Terms

     As of next Friday, the United States Treasury will be unable to issue bonds for the purposes of paying for government debt, unless the debt limit ceiling is increased. You remember the debt limit ceiling? It comes around every so often after President Obama has squandered trillions of hard earned tax payer dollars and demands that congress increase the limit on the nation's credit card, which currently has a balance owed of 17 trillion dollars. The Republicants in congress dutifully acquiesce after pretending to put up a fuss just to fool their base into thinking they are fiscally responsible.
     The current debt limit debate, which will be more like the sound of one hand clapping, if one remembers, was the "fight" that Republicant leadership said they were going to have in lieu of possessing the gonads to defund ObamaCare when they had the chance last spring. But lately, John Boehner and his band of misfits are making noises of defeat, not even demonstrating the pretense of exacting concessions from President Obama in exchange for his ability to put the country in even deeper debt. The Republicant leadership is said by some to be "worn out" over the constant battles with the president. It must take an extreme amount of energy and effort to engage in all that rolling over.
      The broken record of congressional Republicant leadership on the issue of "taking a stand" has alienated much of their base to the point that many may stay home in the upcoming mid-term elections this November. While pundits and others on the Right are predicting gains in the House of Representatives and a "good chance" for a Senate takeover by Republicants, I see a different scenario playing out.
     My pessimism is not because I think Democrats have a more electable platform to run on, after all they have driven this country to the edge of bankruptcy and the worse unemployment we have ever seen, but because Republicants have been more enablers than opposition. Simply raising the debt limit with no concessions from the president makes the whole concept of a limit null and void. The Republicants should remove the farce of the debt limit and allow the president to borrow and spend as much as he wants. In essence that has been the modus operandi over the last 5 years with little exception.
     Speaker of the House, John Boehner, recently quipped that there is no sense in congress passing laws that the president is going to pick and choose which parts of said laws he wants to enforce or not. Well jiminy cricket Batman, is it not congress that has allowed this president to run wild in the candy store, ignoring the restraints put on him by the constitution like a child ignoring the flaccid voice of a weak parent? The power of the constitution is in the willingness of each of the three branches of government to restrain the other two branches, and for the people of the United States to restrain them all with their power of the vote. Sadly, we have become an unrestrained society in which the constitution has no place, and the vacuum will be filled by the oppression of tyranny, realizing the greatest fears of our Founding Fathers.  

Governance Inequality

     Listening to President Obama and other divisive voices on the Left would lead one to believe that the biggest problem in search of a big government solution facing this country is income inequality. But the gap between the rich and the poor is inconsequential, unlike the gap between the governed and those who govern. Wall Street bonuses and corporate golden parachutes are not important, what is important is the government graft, corruption, and influence-peddling that allows middle-class politicians to become millionaires vis-a-vis their time in the public service.
     Unfortunately you will not hear the president or members of congress proposing solutions to solve governance inequality, the gap in the constitution having been torn so wide one could float an oil rig through it. The Founders of this great nation created a system of government that understood, in the words of James Madison, "...if men were governed by angels, there would be no need for restraints on government." That is why the majority of the power to govern was placed into the hands of the people.
     But the chasm between federal power and the people who were given the right by the constitution to be the control on that power, has grown exponentially over the last 60 years, but has accelerated out of control in the last couple of decades. From legislation like ObamaCare and Financial Reform, which are just blank checks to be filled in by members of the bureaucratic class, to presidential edicts that subjugate the will of the people's representatives in congress, governance inequality has become a beast too wild to tame.
     Our "leaders" in Washington no longer see themselves as public servants, but as public masters, an elite class of individuals who perpetuate government wealth by confiscating private wealth. They have subverted this great republic into a three card Monty game where they are the dealer and the rest of us are just the poor rubes who senselessly shovel our hard earned money onto a table rigged by the greed and graft of federal governance.
     Income inequality is a sign of a healthy economy, governance inequality is a sign of tyranny. When the power of government to change people's lives over takes the power for people to change their own lives, then governance inequality has robbed a free people of the purse of their liberty in which their freedom is kept. And when the lawgivers have become separated from those who are subjugated to the full operation of the law, then the sanctity of the constitution becomes swallowed in the profanity of governance inequality.        

The Lesson Of Isaac Lufkin

     Watching Isaac Lufkin move through his daily life, no one would conclude that he is disabled, least of all not Isaac himself. The young Mr. Lufkin was born with no arms, but it has not kept him from becoming a kicker on his high school's football team. The 14 year old Isaac rejects what some might call a disadvantage with his matter of fact statement, "I don't want any one's pity, pity only makes me weak." This extraordinary young man is not only special in and of himself, but he is the result of special parents. He is certainly not the result of modern parenting techniques applied by so many parents that create self-esteem monsters whose only goal is to be receptacles of pity and victimhood.
     Isaac Lufkin is more agile than many of us who have two arms. From using his chin and shoulder to grasp his cafeteria tray and carton of milk, to employing his legs and head to dress himself in his football uniform, including his shoulder pads, Isaac does all the things that anyone with two arms does and more. On the football field, Isaac does not simply kick the ball and run off the field, but runs down field to help tackle the opposing player who was on the receiving end of his kick. Isaac also engages in another teen past time of using social media and the Internet by employing his feet to operate his computer.
     Isaac is truly a breath of fresh air in a society that has become more and more corrupted by a Leftist ideology that teaches young people that they are the axis upon which the earth spins simply for existing. Isaac wants nothing, save that which he achieves of his own grit, determination, and industry. This 14 year old wants to someday be a kicker in the National Football League, and I fully expect that he will achieve that dream. In fact, this young man will be successful in life no matter what his field of endeavor.
     The lesson of Isaac Lufkin is that the truly successful and happy person takes the cards that life and fate has dealt him and lives life to its fullest. Once as a young man, I was complaining about some problem I was having and a priest friend of mine told me, "That is not a problem. Come to me with no arms and tell me about your problems and I will then show you a man with no arms and no legs." That lesson has always stuck with me and has once again been realized in Isaac Lufkin. Isaac lets it matter little that he has no arms, he considers himself blessed to have two legs with which he can operate a computer keyboard, dress himself, open car doors, and kick a football better than anyone else. He knows that the secret ingredient to life is not the things which are external to a person, but the power of heart and mind to accomplish in spite of hurdles and obstacles. 

The Expansion Through Contraction Theory

     The Congressional Budget Office released a report yesterday that estimated ObamaCare will cost the economy 2.3 million jobs in 2021. A steady loss in the ensuing years will be realized do to employers reducing the number of work hours as a means of escaping the new law's mandates for full-time employees. A similar report produced by the CBO in 2011 had the loss of jobs at 800,000, a number that the current report has tripled. As is the case with government accounting, by the time 2021 rolls around, the number of jobs lost to ObamaCare will be well over 10 million.
     The CBO report reads like the medical chart of a patient on hospice care, as it outlined growing deficits after a short period of reductions, Gross Domestic Product growth that will struggle to maintain even a modicum of improvement, and unemployment that will not fall below 6% until late 2016. I remember President Obama saying that unemployment would drop below 6% by the end of his first term, and if it did not then it would be, "a one term proposition," for his presidency. Well, the American people rewarded him anyway with a second term even though he failed to meet even the modest goals he set for himself. People sometimes forget that the average unemployment rate for the entirety of the George W. Bush administration was 4.9%.
     The way in which the Obama administration has been able to fool the American public into believing in the myth of an improving economy is what I call expansion through contraction. Barack Obama has of course had help in this scheme from his marionettes in the financial media and elsewhere. A data point that illustrates how this work was released yesterday, it was factory orders, which dropped 1.5% in the month of December. But since the analysts seeded everyone's expectations for a 1.7% drop, the markets responded positively to the contraction in factory orders. This "bad news is good news simply because it is not worse news" has been the cornerstone of the Obama administration economic policy for the last 5 years.
      The analysts create a positive from overstating a negative. The biggest negative is the fact that the president, as well as those in the media, are still talking about "recovery." Five years after the official end of the recession we should not be in recovery or even talking about it, but enjoying a full blown thriving economy. The reason for the acceptance by those in the financial world of substandard economic data is the bottle of free flowing liquidity the Federal Reserve has held up to the lips of a wino market in the form of its quantitative easing program. But now that the bottle is beginning to be pulled away with the Fed's tapering program, the market is giving a little more weight to actual economic data, hence the recent downturn in the market indices.
     The expansion through contraction theory has held President Obama in good stead, as there has been a plethora of bad economic data over the last five years that has given the president an opportunity to trot out the worn, old horse of, "it could be worse." And the American public, by and large, have accepted economic mediocrity as excellence simply because it is not abject failure.

A Bit About Bitcoins

     P.T. Barnum, the great showman once said, "There's a sucker born every minute." No truer a statement has ever included a more willing bunch of suckers as those who currently invest in bitcoins. You may or may have not have heard about bitcoins, the pseudo-currency/commodity that are comprised of computer algorithms and are used by some in exchange for goods and services over the Internet. Many more have traded their valuable currencies and precious metals for this worthless computer code as a means of investing.
     Bitcoins, a peer-to-peer electronic payment system, was first suggested in an Internet paper in November 2008, and the first bitcoin block was "mined" in January of 2009 by an individual or group of individuals going by the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoins are "mined" by participants developing algorithms that meet the protocol for discovering a block of bitcoins, which currently equals 25 coins. The protocol has been written to make it difficult enough to discover these blocks that only one is discoverable every ten minutes. Every four years the number of bitcoins per block is halved, requiring 100 years for all 21 million bitcoins to be discovered. The 21 million limit is imposed by the original bitcoin protocol written by Satoshi Nakamoto.
     People sign up for the bitcoin network and receive electronic wallet software in which to keep their bitcoins. "Miners" of bitcoins often work in pools because of the enormous computing power it requires to develop the algorithms to discover blocks of bitcoins. Dozens of online websites have begun to accept bitcoins for payment of goods and services. When new blocks are discovered, or transactions with bitcoins occur, they are recorded in the block chain, which is a database tracking bitcoins from discovery through every participants' account they occupy.
     The value of bitcoins since their inception has fluctuated between 0.30/USD per bitcoin to 1124/USD per bitcoin. The enormous volatility of the bitcoin is just one reason it is unsuitable to be a currency. The other is that it has an intrinsic value of zero. In other words, bitcoins are comprised of electrical impulses on a computer and have no value other than the perceived value of the participants in the network. One might make the perceived value argument about anything, i.e., something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. But currencies backed by governments, and precious metals like gold and silver actually have intrinsic value in the full faith and credit of the issuing government and in their physical properties, respectively.
     The bitcoin scam is a house of cards built on a foundation of sand in an earthquake zone. Many countries have banned their use, and the European Union has strongly admonished their people to avoid exposure to this Ponzi scheme. But, oddly enough, the United States government has sanctioned their use, which seems to me to violate laws restricting individuals from creating their own currency. The bitcoin "market" is every bit as lawless as the scheme perpetrated on investors by Bernie Madoff, who fooled his clients into thinking they had value in their accounts simply because he said so.
     The bitcoin hysteria is like a cruel game of musical chairs. When the music stops, and the blatant worthlessness of bitcoins is realized, those poor souls stuck holding the bitcoin bag will be left poorer and with no recourse against faceless and nameless computers on a network which will have dispersed their money into the ether.

A Battle Cry Of Failure

     During the 2012 presidential campaign the Obama re-election effort depended heavily on the slogan, "Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive." The slogan, first uttered by Vice President Laughing Hyena, was dutifully repeated by the lapdog media. But with the distance of some time having lapsed, even those fairly shallow reasons to re-elect a president who single-handedly has destroyed not only the economic health of this country, but our standing in the world, have failed to live up to their billing.
     "Osama Bin Laden is dead...," the first part of the slogan was meant to imply that since Barack Obama finally allowed himself to be pulled off the golf course after repeated attempts and he graciously allowed a photo to be taken of himself in the White House situation room wearing a sports jacket hastily covering his golf shirt, that that somehow made him a great president. It was also more than an implication that since Osama Bin Laden was dead, so was his terror organization, Al Qaeda.
     Today, around the world, Al Qaeda is more influential and capable of inflicting terror than when Barack Obama first took the oath of office in January 2009. The recent taking of Fallujah in the Anwar province of Iraq is just one in a long line of incidents that prove my assertion. The hi-jacking of the Syrian revolution by Al Qaeda is another. Every where one looks there is evidence that Al Qaeda is far from "on the run," as President Obama stated many times. From Libya, where they murdered a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, to Tunisia and a majority of North Africa and into the Middle East, where they have increased their stranglehold on that region.
     Al Qaeda has become stronger because it has become decentralized. No more is every operation of terror orchestrated by the bearded cave dweller in the mountains of Afghanistan. But it has become a federation of terror groups that can strike independently while advancing the same goal.
     The second part of the Obama 2012 campaign slogan does not fare any better than the first. The violation of this nation's bankruptcy laws and the manner in which secured creditors, i.e. the bond holders, were handled by the Obama administration was strictly illegal. But that was only the first sin of the GM bailout. Recently, the government quietly sold its final shares of GM stock at a loss to taxpayers of $10 billion, quite an investment the president made on our behalf. GM also employs half the persons it did in 2000. The waste of hard earned tax payer dollars and the disintegration of this nation's laws was engaged in so that the president could payoff his union supporters with other people's money.
     President Obama's campaign slogan, "Osama Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive," is exemplary of the failure endemic in his administration. But far from the president and his sycophant supporters being ashamed of their failure, they gleefully wallow in it, blissfully unaware of the utter disaster they have created and the hardship they have wrought upon millions of their countrymen.  

The Politics Of The Market

     As another earnings season on Wall Street whimpers to a close with a majority of companies having reported their earnings for the quarter ending December 31, 2013, the politics of the financial world have never been more in focus. There is of course the financial media beating the drum of a roaring economy by quoting meaningless statistics, like 67% of S&P 500 companies having beaten analysts' estimates. Those estimates being the result of constantly lowered expectations for profit and sales from companies cutting work forces to the bone in order to just tread water.
     Many of the companies that have beaten the pathetically low expectations of analysts have also given guidance (a company's sales and profit estimates for the current quarter just beginning) that is lower than expected. Companies know what the average American knows, which somehow escapes the analysts brilliant minds i.e., the economy is slowing down even from the snails pace it has traveled for the last five years since "The Summer of Recovery" was announced. But the Obama lapdogs in the financial media wet themselves over a pathetic statistic like fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product growth of 3.2%. Which barely equals the average for post-World War II economies, and does not even come close to the 5% or more needed to pull the country out of a recession.
     Even when a meaningless statistic like consumer sentiment takes a beating, the analysts see it as good news because it was not worse. The Thompson Reuters/Michigan University consumer sentiment number for January, that was released Friday morning, was a full five percentage points worse than Decembers. But the analysts and the rest of the financial media did hand stands because it was not as low as they expected. This being analogous to expecting your pay to be cut by 25%, and then considering it a raise when it only gets cut by 24%.
     One of the few bright spots in earnings season was another record-breaking quarter by Apple, which sent its share price tumbling 10% in the days following their earnings release. Conversely, Google missed analysts estimate for earnings and saw an appreciation in their share price of $40. Once again proving that Wall Street runs as much on politics as fundamentals. Google plays the game with the financial media and curries their favor by schmoozing them before, during, and after earnings. Apple has developed a corporate culture that keeps a tight lid on company business, so leaks to the almighty analysts are not as forthcoming as in other companies, ergo, Apple is punished by never meeting the analysts expectations for it.
     One thing is clear from this earnings season, the economy is slowing and companies can not cut anymore from their bottom lines to simulate top line growth. With the Federal Reserve pulling away the candy of quantitative easing, ObamaCare stealing more jobs and wealth from the economy, and a record number of people unemployed in this country than ever before, it is going to be a bumpy ride for the financial markets and for all Americans.